Virginia’s General Assembly staff is starting to restore systems after a ransomware attack hit internal servers, bill drafting systems, and the General Assembly voicemail servers.
“We got an email about an hour or so I guess, saying that they had gotten it back up last night, and they’re now in the process of testing to make sure that everything is functioning, and they hope to finish that sometime tonight,” Senator Frank Ruff (R-Clarksville) said on Friday afternoon.
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After a smoking hot week 14 we are on a roll going into the playoff push! I ended last week 8-4 Against The Spread (ATS) bringing my season record to 68-49-2 – a booming 19 games over .500 ATS. My goal is +25 ATS so we are within striking distance this week. As the season draws closer to the playoffs, the wheat starts to separate from the chaff. No time for pretenders, only the contenders prevail starting week 15.
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History, it appears, is repeating itself—at least when it comes to the latest crusade to destroy Donald Trump and everyone around him.
For nearly three years, the American people were warned that Donald Trump had been in cahoots with the Kremlin to rig the 2016 presidential election. Trump-Russia election collusion, the original “stop the steal” campaign—that is, until questioning the outcome of American elections was designated a criminal conspiracy after November 2020—dominated the attention of the ruling class and the entirety of the national news media.
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President Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s administration opened up a significant chunk of a new Air Force tanker contract to the Leiden, Netherlands, based Airbus less than a year after the company paid a nearly $4 billion fine for corruption and despite its history of technology transfers to China.
“Airbus engaged in a multi-year and massive scheme to corruptly enhance its business interests by paying bribes in China and other countries and concealing those bribes,” said Assistant Attorney General Brian A. Benczkowski of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division in a statement released at the end of January.
“This coordinated resolution was possible thanks to the dedicated efforts of our foreign partners at the Serious Fraud Office in the United Kingdom and the PNF in France,” Benczkowski said.
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The founder of the controversial, Mark Zuckerberg-backed election group Center for Tech and Civic Life was a fellow at a Harvard University think tank which receives funding from Chinese Communist Party-linked firms.
The CTCL was founded in 2012 by Tiana Epps-Johnson, a 2015-16 Technology and Democracy Fellow at Kennedy School of Government’s Ash Center, which is partly funded by several Chinese Communist Party-affiliated enterprises, according to the National Pulse.
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The CDC on Friday announced it will allow children who have been exposed to COVID-19 to remain in school if they test negative at least twice in a week, after interacting with an infected person.
The goal of the policy is to keep as many children in school as possible, given the actual risk of them contracting and spreading the illness.
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Democratic lawmakers reportedly eliminated a proposed measure to ban offshore oil and gas drilling along the U.S. coastline from their sweeping spending package after Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin announced his opposition.
The provision was absent from an early draft of the roughly $2.2 trillion Build Back Better Act that was circulated on Capitol Hill by the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee which Manchin chairs, congressional aides toldThe New York Times and The Washington Post. The restriction would have applied to all drilling rigs located in the Atlantic Ocean and Pacific Ocean as well as the Gulf of Mexico.
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A new report estimated the annual cost of elevated inflation this year will be around $3,500 per household.
The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, one of the nation’s leading business schools, released the report, which estimated much higher costs for American families because of inflation that has risen this year at the fastest rate in decades.
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Stephen K. Bannon welcomed The Star News Network’s CEO and Editor in Chief Michael Patrick Leahy on Thursday’s War Room: Pandemic to discuss The Ohio Star’s breaking story by Peter D’Abrasco regarding the unapproved COVID-19 vaccines being distributed by OhioHealth. Bannon: Michael Patrick Leahy from The Ohio Star, you’ve…
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The Biden Administration is planning to offer bonuses to any doctors who “create and implement an anti-racism plan” in their medical facilities, according to the Washington Free Beacon.
The directive was issued under new rules from the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), which aim to update Medicare in order to “reflect changes in medical practice.” As of January 1st, doctors involved in Medicare can increase reimbursement rates by holding “clinic-wide reviews” of their facilities’ “commitment to anti-racism.” HHS notes that, in such surveys, race must be defined as “a political and social construct, not a physiological one.”
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A federal appeals court on Friday night reinstated President Joe Biden’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate for private companies with more than 100 workers, reversing lower court rulings and setting up a likely showdown before the U.S. Supreme Court.
A three-judge panel of the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled 2-1 that the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration had the authority to Impose the mandate due to take effect Jan. 4.
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The government has reported that, since the year 2020, fentanyl overdoses have become the new leading cause of death for American adults between the ages of 18 and 45, as reported by Fox News.
The analysis from the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) shows that nearly 79,000 Americans died from the drug between 2020 and 2021. Of those, just over 37,000 died in 2020 while almost 42,000 died in 2021. Fentanyl is an opioid that is sometimes laced with other drugs such as meth and heroin when used by addicts, but can also be deadly on its own in even small doses. The primary foreign sources for imports of the drug are China and Mexico.
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Portland anarchists crowned a season of monument destruction in October 2020 when they pulled down the city’s Teddy Roosevelt and Abraham Lincoln statues and attacked the nearby Oregon Historical Society—despite its having been so woke and feminist for years it could be called the Oregon Hysterical Society. This occurred on what Antifa organizers billed as an “Indigenous Day of Rage” (something that was about as genuinely “indigenous” as the Boston Tea Party) and coincided with Portland’s official (anti-) holiday refuting Columbus Day—Indigenous People’s Day—which promises to grow more strident and violent, if no more indigenous, annually.
Last October, the nation and the city weren’t as far gone as they are now. Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler felt compelled to stand with the police chief and denounce the rioters’ actions. But in doing so, he followed the same pattern he and the city used to acquiesce to anarchist and Black Lives Matter political terror over the summer of 2020: denouncing the violence, affirming the anarchists’ right to speech, even sympathizing with the goals of anti-police rioters, and conspicuously not defending their targets—then it was the police, in this instance, it was our history.
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A former U.S. defense contractor was arrested earlier this week on criminal charges in connection with espionage, according to the Justice Department.
John Murray Rowe Jr., a 63-year-old resident of Lead, South Dakota, allegedly attempted to provide classified national defense information to the Russian government.
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On Thursday, a lawsuit was filed against New York Attorney General Letitia James (D-N.Y.) over the state’s “public nuisance law,” which allows private citizens to sue gun stores and gun manufacturers if their weapons are used in an unrelated crime, CNN reports.
The law, signed into law in July, is the first of its kind in the nation, making gun stores and manufacturers liable in any civil suits that may result from firearms being used to commit crimes, even if the distributors had no role in the crime itself. It was deliberately signed as an attempt to circumvent the 2005 Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act, a federal law which specifically granted immunity to arms manufacturers and distributors in such cases.
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Russia’s looming invasion of Ukraine presents a clear and present danger to the safety of the European Union and a direct challenge to the NATO alliance, but only now are our major media waking up to this dire threat to Western security. We must now confront urgent questions: Did the United States strengthen Russia, did it weaken Ukraine, and did it do so under the nose of these media?
First, a quick run-through of American actions that strengthened Russia. In his 2009 inaugural address, Barack Obama promised to approach adversaries with an open hand, not a closed fist. For this, he won a Nobel Peace Prize, an oxymoronic name, equivalent to the Affordable Care Act.
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Virginia had historic revenue growth in 2021 and finished $2.6 billion above forecasts, thanks to a conservative approach, Secretary of Finance Joe Flores told the General Assembly money committees on Thursday. Flores’ presentation said that conservative approach should continue, with forecasts suggesting that Virginia’s income and job growth will continue in coming years, but will lag behind the nation.
“It’s also important to remember, to look back, because a year ago, you guys had just finished a session where you had taken down revenues to the tune of $2.7 billion, basically five percent of our biennial General Fund revenues,” Flores said.
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HENRICO, Virginia – Governor-elect Glenn Youngkin met with the Asian Chamber of Commerce for a round table with Senator Siobhan Dunnavant (R-Henrico) and Delegate Rodney Willett (D-Henrico). Youngkin told those in attendance that he planned to bring 400,000 new jobs and 10,000 new startups to Virginia.
“So, in order to do that, we in fact recognize that we have to put a lot of the ingredients together, just like we’re cooking a meal,” Youngkin said. “And one of those ingredients is, in fact, the recognition that there are some inhibitions in starting small businesses. So one of the things I want to hear from you are the challenges that you all feel and hear when you start your businesses.”
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What is behind recent pessimistic appraisals of democracy’s future, from Hillary Clinton, Adam Schiff, Brian Williams and other elite intellectuals, media personalities, and politicians on the Left? Some are warning about its possible erosion in 2024. Others predict the democracy downturn as early 2022, with scary scenarios of “autocracy” and Trump “coups.”
To answer that question, understand first what is not behind these shrill forecasts.
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Several top Nike executives funneled more than $60,000 to the re-election campaign of Democratic Oregon Sen. Ron Wyden over the course of just 16 days in September.
On Wednesday evening, Wyden blocked the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act which the House passed unanimously Tuesday and the Senate was expected to overwhelmingly approve. President Joe Biden vowed to sign the bill once passed by both chambers and work with Congress to “ensure global supply chains are free of forced labor,” White House press secretary Jen Psaki said in a statement.
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Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds is joining four other state governors in requesting the Department of Defense withdraw vaccine mandate directives to National Guard members in Title 32 duty status.
U.S. National Guard members’ deadline to be vaccinated was Dec. 2. Nearly 50,000 military members across all branches have declined to get vaccinated, Reynolds’ office’s news release said.
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A former senior FBI lawyer who falsified a surveillance document in the Trump-Russia investigation has been restored as a member in “good standing” by the District of Columbia Bar Association even though he has yet to finish serving out his probation as a convicted felon, according to disciplinary records obtained by RealClearInvestigations.
The move is the latest in a series of exceptions the bar has made for Kevin Clinesmith, who pleaded guilty in August 2020 to doctoring an email used to justify a surveillance warrant targeting former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page.
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New Customs and Border Protection (CBP) chief Chris Magnus sent a welcome email to staff on Tuesday, but he completely omitted any mention of illegal immigration.
The controversial Biden appointee was confirmed by the Senate last week and sworn in on Monday.
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The United States is drifting toward a catastrophic defeat.
I am talking about a defeat which will eliminate our freedom and permanently subordinate America to Communist China and its demands for absolute control and obedience.
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Los Angeles Unified School District will hold off enforcement until the start of the Fall 2022 semester for a vaccine mandate that would have moved thousands of students out of the classroom and into remote learning.
The LAUSD’s Board of Education voted Tuesday to suspend enforcement of a vaccine mandate for all students 12 and older until the fall. The original mandate, which passed in September, required students to show proof of full vaccination or obtain an exemption by Jan. 10, 2022, to continue attending in-person classes.
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The number of Americans who filed new unemployment claims totaled 206,000 in the week ending Dec. 11 as the tight labor market continues to recover, though it remains far from pre-pandemic levels.
The Labor Department figure shows an 18,000 claim increase compared to the week ending Dec. 4 when jobless claims reached 184,000. Economists surveyed by The Wall Street Journal projected claims to increase to just 195,000 from the previous week’s figure.
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Congress passed a $770 billion defense bill Wednesday, authorizing a wide range of military spending for the next year.
The Senate passed the bipartisan 2022 National Defense Authorization Act with an 89-10 vote, sending the legislation to President Joe Biden. The bill, which is passed annually in some form, includes a revamp of how the the military deals with sexual assaults as well as a 2.7% pay increase for military members and employees at the Department of Defense.
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Governor Ralph Northam presented his 2022-2024 budget proposal to the money committees of the Virginia General Assembly and the incoming administration on Thursday. Several elements of Northam’s proposal, including tax cuts, were inspired by Governor-elect Glenn Youngkin’s policy. Northam said he’s leaving Virginia in good financial conditions.
“And today I present to you my last budget. I’m biased, but I also think it’s our best one yet,” Northam said according to his prepared remarks. “That’s because Virginia’s economy is doing very well. State revenues are at record investments, while also putting money back into the pockets of the hardest working Virginians. We need to be clear about how this has happened. It is because over these four years, we have consistently taken a prudent, cautious approach to budgeting.”
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Former President Donald Trump on Wednesday slammed Congressman Adam Schiff for changing the substance of a text message that he read during a January 6th Committee hearing.
Congressman Schiff (D-CA-28) allegedly altered a text message between White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows and Congressman Jim Jordan (R-OH-04), according to a report from The Federalist.
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Yesterday, former Rep. Mark Meadows was held in contempt by the same House he once served in before his appointment as former President Donald J. Trump’s last chief of staff. Meadows had been complying with Nancy Pelosi’s appointed select committee tasked with looking into January 6 until it went too far.
Meadows is now suing Pelosi and the select committee.
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The Loudoun County School Board voted seven to one to elect former member Tom Marshall to the board. On Tuesday, the board left a closed meeting and immediately voted on the motion to appoint Marshall with little comment. Only Member John Beatty voted against Marshall, who was sworn in and seated immediately after the vote.
“The board has considered all criteria, including the public interest. Tom Marshall has served the district of Leesburg for over eight years, and has an extensive career in education, and will be able to return to his former seat knowing the staff and having firsthand experience with the budget cycle as well as strategic planning which we look forward to working on throughout the next year,” Member Denise Corbo said before the vote.
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Four FBI officials engaged in sexual intercourse with foreign prostitutes, according to an internal report.
The Department of Justice (DOJ) Office of the Inspector General (OIG) concluded an investigation into six FBI officials related to their involvement with foreign prostitutes, finding that four of the officials engaged in sexual intercourse, while a fifth solicited “commercial sex,” according to a report issued Tuesday by the DOJ OIG. A sixth official “committed misconduct” by failing to report the incidents, according to the report.
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Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) on Wednesday excoriated Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) for doctoring his text messages after the Democrat-led congressional committee investigating the Jan. 6 Capitol breach admitted to misrepresenting Jordan’s communications.
This is the second time in less than a month that the Jan. 6 committee has acknowledged a major blunder for pushing a false narrative of events.
“It was doctored,” Jordan told Just the News in his first public comments on the matter. “It was a text message that was forwarded on to Mark [Meadows]. This again shows how partisan, biased, and wrong this [Jan. 6] committee is. Who can trust anything they do? If they’re willing to doctor a document and mislead the American people, who can trust anything they do?”
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Wednesday morning on the Tennessee Star Report, host Michael Patrick Leahy welcomed Tennennee Fifth Congressional GOP Candidate Robby Starbuck to the newsmaker line to talk about his mission, national high profile, and local endorsements.
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Tea Party Patriots Action — the political action arm of the populist conservative movement that sprang up in 2009 — is calling upon House Republican leader Kevin McCarthy to strip GOP Reps. Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger of their conference memberships.
“As members of the January 6 committee, Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger have become willing agents of Speaker Pelosi’s war on President Trump, Trump administration officials and Trump supporters,” says Jenny Beth Martin, an honorary chairperson for the group and an early member of the grassroots Tea Party movement.
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During an interview on Tuesday, Joe Biden chastised unvaccinated Americans, accusing them of being irresponsible spreaders of disease, and suggesting they are unpatriotic if they don’t at least get tested before they go out in public.
Biden began his harangue by scoffing at the idea that people should feel free to refuse the experimental injections, even though they have led to an alarmingly high number of adverse events, including around 400,000 deaths according to some estimates.
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The U.S. Senate voted Tuesday to raise the debt ceiling $2.5 trillion, a move that would avoid a default on the nation’s debt payments likely until 2023, beyond the midterm elections.
The 50-49 vote along party lines now sends the measure to the U.S. House of Representatives.
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America’s largest bank, JPMorgan Chase & Co., told unvaccinated employees at the Manhattan offices that they must remain at home and work remotely, multiple sources reported.
Tuesday’s new rule allows only vaccinated employees and visitors to enter the bank’s Manhattan offices, a JPMorgan spokesperson told the Daily Caller News Foundation. Maks will be required when walking through lobbies, using elevators and in the company restaurants when not eating.
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Wednesday morning on the Tennessee Star Report, host Michael Patrick Leahy welcomed National Political Editor for The Tennessee Star Neil McCabe to the newsmakers line to weigh in on the status of the Build Back Better bill and the fate of Nancy Pelosi.
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Wednesday morning on the Tennessee Star Report, host Michael Patrick Leahy welcomed the original all star paneilstCrom Carmichael in studio for another edition of Crom’s Crommentary.
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Writing in the January/February 2022 issue of Foreign Affairs, the Hoover Institution’s Elizabeth Economy explores Chinese President Xi Jinping’s efforts to shape the international order by “fundamentally transforming the global system” to reflect Beijing’s interests and values. The leader of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), she explains, seeks nothing less than to replace the U.S.-led post–World War II global order with a “China-centric order with its own norms and values.” To understand what is at stake here, let’s talk geopolitics.
Since the end of the 19th century, the world has been what the great British geopolitical thinker Sir Halford Mackinder called a “closed political system.” The end of the age of discovery ushered in a post-Columbian world where, in Mackinder’s words, “Every explosion of social forces, instead of being dissipated in a surrounding circuit of unknown space and barbaric chaos, will be sharply re-echoed from the far side of the globe, and weak elements in the political and economic organism of the world will be shattered in consequence.” The events of the 20th century confirmed Mackinder’s observation — through two world wars and one cold war, the center of the world’s geopolitical landscape shifted away from Europe to North America and Asia. At the end of this “long war,” which lasted from 1914 to 1989, the formerly Euro-centric international system was at first temporarily replaced by America’s “unipolar moment,” which gradually receded with the emergence of today’s bipolar geopolitical contest between the United States and China.
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Trump Media & Technology Group (TMTG), former President Donald Trump’s media company, announced a partnership Tuesday with video streaming and hosting platform Rumble.
Rumble will provide TMTG’s social media network TRUTH Social with video and streaming services, according to a press release. TRUTH Social is already hosted on Rumble’s cloud infrastructure service Rumble Cloud as well as RightForge cloud servers.
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The House voted Tuesday to recommend criminal contempt of Congress charges against Mark Meadows, former President Donald Trump’s ex-chief of staff and a former House member, for defying a subpoena from the Jan. 6 Select Committee.
Meadows had originally cooperated with the committee, turning over thousands of texts, emails and other communications, but refused to meet with its members and to turn over direct communications with Trump after claiming executive privilege. The contempt motion passed 222-208 at about 11 p.m. with two Republicans voting alongside the unanimous Democratic caucus.
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Former President Donald Trump on Wednesday slammed Congressman Adam Schiff for changing the substance of a text message that he read during a January 6th Committee hearing.
Congressman Schiff (D-CA-28) allegedly altered a text message between White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows and Congressman Jim Jordan (R-OH-04), according to a report from The Federalist.
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Google told its employees that they would lose pay and eventually their jobs if they did not abide by the company’s COVID-19 vaccination policy, according to an internal memo obtained by CNBC.
Employees had until Dec. 3 to state their vaccination status to the company and upload the required documentation or to apply for a medical or religious exemption, according to the memo, CNBC reported.
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As the Virginia General Assembly battles a ransomware attack, the Virginia Department of Behavioral Health and Developmental Systems (DBHDS) is dealing with impacts from a separate attack against timekeeping systems provider Ultimate Kronos Group (UKG).
“It is clear the global KRONOS ransomware attack and the ransomware attack experienced over the weekend in Virginia are not connected, and there is no indication that information was compromised or that any DBHDS systems have been compromised. Central Office staff are working with UKG to develop an interim situation and find out more information,” DBHDS Communications Director Lauren Cunningham told The Virginia Star. “State facilities have switched back to manual systems that are very time-intensive, but they will get the job done and ensure staff are paid.”
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Jewhar Ilham last saw her father seven years ago.
“I don’t even know if he’s alive,” said Ilham, a Chinese-born Uyghur Muslim. “My cousin, she was a nurse, she was sentenced to 10 years for having a photo and an article of my father in her cell phone.”
Ilham’s father, Uyghur scholar Ilham Tohti, is an accomplished academic, having taught economics at Minzu University of China in Beijing and received several international awards including five Nobel Peace Prize nominations. But Chinese authorities arrested Tohti, who researched human rights violations committed by the Chinese Communist Party-controlled government, in 2014 and later sentenced him to life imprisonment after finding him guilty of “separatism.”
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After months of foot-dragging, Joe Biden’s Justice Department is preparing for the first set of trials related to its sprawling prosecution of January 6 defendants: Robert Gieswein, who turned himself in and was arrested on January 19 for his involvement in the Capitol protest, is scheduled to stand trial in February.
A week after his arrest, Gieswein, 24 at the time, was indicted by a federal grand jury on six counts including “assaulting, resisting, or impeding” law enforcement with a dangerous weapon that day. He has been behind bars ever since, denied bail while Judge Emmet Sullivan delayed his trial on numerous occasions. Gieswein is among 40 or so January 6 defendants held in a part of the D.C. jail system solely used to detain Capitol protesters.
Federal prosecutors accuse Gieswein of using a chemical spray against police officers and carrying a baseball bat. Clad in military-style gear, Gieswein climbed through a broken window shortly after the first breach of the building. He told a reporter on the scene that “the corrupt politicians who have been in office for 50 or 60 years . . . need to be imprisoned.” Democratic politicians, Gieswein complained, sold out the country to “the Rothchilds and the Rockefellers,” a remark the FBI investigator on his case described as an “anti-Semitic” conspiracy theory.
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The Virginia Supreme Court will approve final redistricting maps for Virginia later this month, after the Virginia Redistricting Commission failed to complete any maps. Draft proposals from the Court’s special masters released maps last week with no consideration for protecting incumbents, which has triggered complaints from both parties.
“Virginia’s first draft Congressional map is a disaster that completely fails to deliver fair representation that reflects the Commonwealth. Virginia voters wanted a bipartisan and transparent process. What they got was two people hastily drafting a map behind closed doors and ignoring public input,” Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee Chair Congressman Sean Patrick Maloney (D-New York-18) said in a press release.
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The Producer Price Index (PPI), which measures inflation at the wholesale level, soared 9.6% year-over-year as of November, growing at the fastest rate ever measured, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) announced Tuesday.
BLS reported that the PPI, which measures inflation before it hits consumers, grew 0.8% in November. As of October, the measure grew just 8.6% on a year-over-year basis and just 0.6% in that month alone, meaning wholesale prices grew more and to a worse yearly figure in November than they did in October.
Economists projected a year-over-year increase of the core PPI, which excludes food and energy prices, to be 7.2% year-over-year and a 0.4% increase from October, according to CNBC. Demand for goods was the biggest driver for the surge in producer prices, increasing 1.2% in November, slightly down from October’s 1.3% figure. Final demand services inflation increased 0.7% in November, much faster than October’s 0.2%.
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