‘Who Better to Help Make That Change But Me?’: Virginia Lieutenant Governor-Elect Winsome Sears Says Democrats Are Losing Grip on Two Key Demographics

Winsome Sears, the Republican lieutenant governor-elect of Virginia, told The New York Times that Democrats are at risk of losing Black and immigrant voters.

As an immigrant from Jamaica and the first black woman elected to statewide office in Virginia, Sears told the NYT she was the perfect person to kickstart her demographic’s political realignment in America.

“The message is important,” Sears told the outlet. “But the messenger is equally important.”

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Commentary: The DOJ’s Whitmer ‘Kidnapping’ Case Faces Uncertain Future

Gretchen Whitmer

The U.S. Department of Justice received an unwelcome Christmas gift from defense attorneys representing five men charged with conspiring to “kidnap” Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer in 2020: a motion to dismiss the case.

The Christmas Day filing is the latest blow to the government’s scandal-ridden prosecution; defense counsel is building a convincing argument that the FBI used undercover agents and informants to entrap their clients in a wide-ranging scheme that resulted in bad press for Donald Trump as early voting was underway in the key swing state last year. What began as random social media chatter to oppose lockdown policies quickly morphed into a dangerous plan to abduct Whitmer as soon as the FBI took over.

A Michigan judge delayed the trial, now set for March 8, so defense attorneys could investigate the misconduct of FBI special agents handling at least a dozen government informants involved in the caper.

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Ivy League Researcher Hits Brick Wall with Medical Journals on COVID Vaccine Death Study

A Columbia University researcher who estimates COVID-19 vaccine-related deaths are “underreported by a factor of 20” told Just the News that medical journals are rebuffing his research, largely for “not very substantive” reasons.

His study has been “desk rejected by over 10 editors at medical journals,” said clinical neurobiologist Spiro Pantazatos. “I’ve lost count at this point.”

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CDC Shortens Isolation Window for Positive COVID-19 Result to Five Days

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has updated the amount of time it recommends people isolate themselves after testing positive for COVID-19, shortening it from 10 days to five.

“Given what we currently know about COVID-19 and the Omicron variant, CDC is shortening the recommended time for isolation from 10 days for people with COVID-19 to 5 days, if asymptomatic, followed by 5 days of wearing a mask when around others,” the CDC said in a statement Monday.

The CDC changed the guidance because officials believe the data indicates the majority of COVID-19 transmission takes place early in the course of the illness, “generally in the 1-2 days prior to onset of symptoms and the 2-3 days after,” the statement said.

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Commentary: Joe Biden’s Top 10 Lies of 2021

Joe Biden at desk, looking over documents

President Joe Biden has stumbled, mumbled, and bumbled his way through his first year in office. While many of his gaffes leave us laughing, much of what comes out of his mouth isn’t just nonsense, it’s outright lies. Here’s a look at Biden’s Top 10 Lies of the past year.

Georgia election reforms

Biden claimed “Georgia’s new law ends voting hours early so working people can’t cast their vote.”

Even the Washington Post called Biden out for this lie (after the paper repeatedly repeated it for months!)

Biden repeatedly condemned a new Georgia election law that imposed new restrictions on voting, but one of his complaints was simply false: “It ends voting hours early so working people can’t cast their vote after their shift is over.” Many listeners might assume he was talking about voting on Election Day. But Election Day hours were not changed. The law did make some changes to early voting. But experts say the net effect of the new early-voting rules was to expand the opportunities to vote for most Georgians, not limit them.

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Commentary: ‘Roots,’ ‘Dreams,’ and the Unequal Punishment of Fraud

A week before Christmas, on the occasion of Alex Haley’s centennial year, Michael Patrick Hearn penned a lengthy tribute to his one-time Hamilton College prof. The first 4,000 words of the New York Times article Hearn fulfilled the promise of its title, as Hearn recounted in loving detail how “Alex Haley Taught America About Race — and a Young Man How to Write.”

Only about 500 words before the article’s completion does the Times reader learn there were problems with Haley’s 1976 “magnum opus”— Roots: The Saga of an American Family. Writes Hearn, much too matter-of-factly, “Haley and Doubleday might have saved themselves a lot of trouble had they acknowledged from the first that their big best seller was based on a true story.” This is Hearn’s gentle way of saying the book is a fraud. If additional irony were needed, Hearn wrote his paean to Haley under the Times rubric, “Nonfiction.”

Haley, in fact, stands accused of three counts of literary fraud. He passed off fiction as fact. He passed off another’s work as his own. And he plagiarized. Only one popular writer in recent times has faced comparable accusations. That is Barack Obama, author of his own imagined family saga, Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance. More on Obama in a minute.

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Iowa Farmers Prepare for California’s Prop 12

Man in gray tee and blue jeans walking in a field with two hogs behind him

Hogs born Jan. 1, 2022, or later are subject to California’s Prop 12.

Some Iowa agricultural leaders have criticized the law, which prohibits the sale of pork from hogs that are the offspring of sows that were raised in pens with less than 24 square feet of usable floorspace per pig.

California accounts for about 15% of the U.S. pork market, the National Pork Producers Council said in a September news release. The NPPC is asking the U.S. Supreme Court to determine Prop 12’s constitutionality.

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Analysis: States Where Unelected Bureaucrats Took over Redistricting Experienced Difficulties

In Michigan, the state’s civil rights agency said proposed maps of legislative districts “do not measure up to the requirements of the law.” In Pennsylvania, Republican lawmakers complained about an “extreme partisan gerrymander.” And in Virginia, incumbents and potential challengers scrambled to work with proposed district maps.

In theory, new bureaucracies to draw up maps for congressional and legislative districts were supposed to save democracy from politics and block the practice of gerrymandering.

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Football Legend John Madden Dies Unexpectedly at 85

Pro-Football Hall of Fame coach John Madden died unexpectedly Tuesday morning at the age of 85, the NFL reported.

“We all know him as the Hall of Fame coach of the Oakland Raiders and broadcaster who worked for every major network, but more than anything, he was a devoted husband, father and grandfather,” NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell said, adding that he sends his condolences to Madden’s family.

“Nobody loved football more than Coach. He was football. He was an incredible sounding board to me and so many others. There will never be another John Madden, and we will forever be indebted to him for all he did to make football and the NFL what it is today,” Goodell concluded.

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Nurses Blast New CDC Emergency Guidance That Allows Healthcare Workers Infected with COVID to Return to Work

Healthcare worker in hair net and mask

Healthcare workers are up in arms over a new U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) emergency guidance that allows healthcare workers who have had “higher risk exposures” to COVID, and even those infected with COVID to return to work after a five day quarantine as long as they’re asymptomatic.

Nurses groups are condemning the CDC’s guidance as  “potentially dangerous” for both workers and patients.

Earlier this month, the CDC issued the alert to health care workers across the United States as a “contingency” plan for anticipated staffing shortages due to the highly transmissible Omicron variant.

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Nasdaq Expected to Underperform the S&P 500 for First Time in over Five Years

The Nasdaq Composite, a technology-heavy index of publicly-traded companies, is set to underperform the S&P 500 for the first time since 2016, according to CNBC.

The S&P 500, a stock market index consisting of the 500 largest publicly-traded companies in the U.S., climbed 28% in 2021 as of Monday, while the Nasdaq was up 23% on a year-over-year basis, according to CNBC. The S&P 500 previously beat the Nasdaq in 2016 and 2011.

The Nasdaq had a strong start to 2021, almost doubling the S&P 500 in February, CNBC reported. Trading slowed after the arrival of the COVID-19 vaccines, which boosted sentiment among investors that the pandemic was ending, reducing demand for remote work technology and other tech-focused goods.

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Archaeologists Uncover Ancient Shipwrecks, Find Hundreds of Silver Coins from Almost 2,000 Years Ago

Archaeologists discovered two ancient shipwrecks off the Mediterranean cost filled with ancient coins from 2,000 years ago, the Associated Press reported.

Artifacts from the discovery, made near the ancient city of Caesarea, date back to the Roman and Mamluk periods, nearly 1,700 and 600 years ago, respectively, according to the AP. The findings included hundreds of silver and bronze coins dating to the middle of the third century, with more than 500 silver coins dating back to the Middle Ages.

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Plastics Manufacturer Expands in Virginia, Eligible for State Aid

A plastics manufacturer, Starplast USA, is setting up a new facility in Chesterfield County and will be eligible to receive state-funded assistance through multiple programs, Gov. Ralph Northam announced.

Starplast USA, which is a subsidiary of the Israel-based Starplast, will invest about $17.7 million for its new facility, which is projected to create 300 jobs. The company creates a variety of plastic products, which includes garden storage, houseware and toys. The specific amount of money Starplast will receive from the state is still not clear.

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U.S. Tech Giant Apologizes to China After Telling Suppliers to Avoid Products from Xinjiang

U.S. chip maker and technology company Intel apologized to its Chinese business partners and customers Thursday after telling its suppliers to avoid sourcing from the Xinjiang region of China.

Intel sent a letter to suppliers earlier this month urging them to avoid products, labor and materials from Xinjiang, home of China’s Uyhgur Muslim minority. The letter, written by Intel’s Jackie Sturm, vice president and general manager of global supply chain operations, said Intel had an expectation that suppliers were “prohibiting any human trafficked or involuntary labor” in their supply chains.

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Commentary: The Biggest Myth About Nuclear ‘Waste’

Biohazard sign

With a dismissive wave of the hand, nuclear power opponents play their trump card to argue why they will never support this safe, dependable, carbon-free source of energy.

“Radioactive waste.”

But in doing so, they reveal their ignorance. Nuclear ‘waste’ – in the form of spent uranium fuel rods – is not really waste.

The United States, which generates about a fifth of its electricity from nuclear power, produces roughly 2,000 metric tons of spent nuclear fuel each year, which must be securely stored in immense concrete and steel casks for hundreds of years. That sounds like a taxing task, but if you aggregate all of the spent fuel produced in the U.S. since the 1950s, it would actually fit on one football field stacked about ten yards high. Nuclear plant operators are more than capable of handling this amount for the foreseeable future.

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Missouri Legislators Want to End Sales Tax On Guns, Food, Diapers in 2022 Session

If the number of bills submitted in the Missouri House of Representatives and the Senate is any indication, lots of time will be devoted to debating taxes during the next legislative session starting Jan. 5, 2022.

Approximately 10% of the 1,020 bills filed contain the word “tax” in the description. Senators filed about 40 bills and joint resolutions while representatives filed approximately 60.

More than 50 bills cover taxation and general revenue.

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Minnesota Mother, Wife of January 6 Defendants Speaks Out: ‘I Can’t Believe Our Government Is Doing This’

Rosemarie Westbury’s life was turned upside down on April 9. Armored vehicles carrying federal agents equipped with fully-automatic rifles and battering rams were looking for her son.

It was 6:30 in the morning and Rosemarie was on her way to work as the sole breadwinner of the family. Her 62-year-old husband, Robert, has had eight strokes.

She received a terrifying call from one of her sons: the FBI was at their door.

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