Tea Party Patriots Action (TPPA) and the Job Creators Network (JCN) praised the ruling handed down by the U.S. Supreme Court that prohibited President Joe Biden’s vaccine mandate for private businesses.
The mandate, which would have been enacted by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, could have forced businesses with 100 or more employees to mandate the vaccine or weekly testing.
Read More
In a Thursday afternoon ruling, the Supreme Court blocked the Biden administration’s OSHA vaccine mandate that would apply to American workers.
The court allowed a separate policy, that requires vaccinations for most health-care workers at facilities that receive Medicaid and Medicare funding, to stand.
Read More
Tina Ramirez has scrubbed her campaign for the GOP nomination for congressional district seven, due to redistricting. On Wednesday, she announced that she will run for state Senate District 12 in 2023. That sets her up for a primary battle with self-proclaimed Trump-in-heels Senator Amanda Chase (R-Chesterfield), whose own CD 7 ambitions were smashed by redistricting.
“The 12th Senate District is a wholly new district, which is exciting because we need new voices and fresh ideas,” Ramirez told The Richmond-Times Dispatch. “This is what I bring to the conservative movement.”
Read More
A tiny administrative agency in the District of Columbia announced a new policy Tuesday that will likely serve as a model for a whole-of-government push to assemble lists of Americans who object on religious grounds to a COVID-19 vaccine.
The Pretrial Services Agency for the District of Columbia—a federal independent entity that assists officers in the District of Columbia courts in formulating release recommendations and providing supervision and services to defendants awaiting trial—announced a new records system that will store the names and “personal religious information” of all employees who make “religious accommodation requests for religious exception from the federally mandated vaccination requirement.”
Read More
A TikTok influencer who frequently posts anti-white screeds and LGBT content on social media is a middle school teacher at a New Jersey charter school, The Star News Network can reveal.
Nairobi Colon teaches at KIPP Whittier Middle School in Camden, New Jersey. KIPP, which stands for Knowledge is Power Program, is a nationwide nonprofit network of charter schools, funded in part by private donors.
Read More
Virginia House Republicans took power on Wednesday with the formal election and swearing-in of Speaker of the House Todd Gilbert (R-Shenandoah). The first day of the 2022 General Assembly session was marked by ceremony and by minor squabbles between Democrats and Republicans over House rules. In the morning, Gilbert and other Republican leaders previewed their legislative goals for the session in a press conference.
“Our agenda for 2022 is a direct response to what we heard from voters on the campaign trail,” Gilbert said. “Throughout the campaign, voters consistently told us they were worried about their children’s education, inflation was making it harder to take care of their families, and they wanted to see the safety of their communities improved.”
Read More
In a new bombshell report, Joe Biden’s Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona appears to have solicited the infamous letter from the National School Board Association (NSBA) which falsely described conservative parents as “domestic terrorists.”
According to the New York Post, newly-uncovered emails from October featured NSBA Secretary-Treasurer Kristi Swett explicitly saying that then-interim CEO Chip Slaven “was writing a letter to provide information to the White House, from a request by Secretary Cardona.” The email, dated October 6th, was obtained via a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request by the nonprofit watchdog group Parents Defending Education.
Read More
Democrats across the country are pushing to continue allowing private money to fund public elections as Republicans try to limit the practice, which they say gave Joe Biden an unfair and perhaps decisive advantage in his victory over Donald Trump in the 2020 presidential contest.
So far at least 10 Republican-controlled states have passed laws to prohibit or limit the use of private money in public elections. These include the swing states of Arizona, Florida, Georgia, and Ohio. In another swing state, North Carolina, Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper vetoed such legislation, as did other Democratic governors.
Read More
President Joe Biden’s administration plans to provide millions of COVID-19 tests to K-12 schools each month, the White House said in a Wednesday statement.
This month, the Biden administration will start shipping five million rapid COVID-19 tests each month to K-12 schools across the country in an effort to keep schools open amid a spike in COVID-19 cases and the rise of the Omicron coronavirus variant, according to White House officials. The new tests will allow schools to double the “volume of testing” from November 2021.
The administration also plans to expand lab capacity to provide an additional five million tests per month so schools can “perform individual and pooled testing in classrooms nationwide.”
Read More
In his final State of the Commonwealth address, Governor Ralph Northam said that his administration had been focused on helping people. He highlighted economic success, investment in skills training, education that reckons with Virginia’s past, clean energy, criminal justice reform, election law changes, and infrastructure investment.
“We are leaving this Commonwealth better than it was when we came into office. We have built a state that does a better job of treating people right. It’s more welcoming, more open, more fair and equitable. We have built a state that helps people who need it—whether they need health care, or cleaner water, or to keep a roof over their head during a global pandemic,” Northam said.
Read More
A top official with the Federal Bureau of Investigation repeatedly refused to disclose how many FBI agents and informants were involved in the Capitol protest on January 6, 2021.
Testifying before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Tuesday morning, Jill Sanborn, executive assistant director of the FBI’s national security branch, cited privileged protocols as to why she would not tell Senator Ted Cruz (R-Texas) the number of FBI assets that “actively participated” in the protest. “Sir, I’m sure you can appreciate that I can’t go into sources and methods,” Sanborn, who served as assistant director of the FBI’s counterterrorism division when the protest erupted on January 6 and would have full knowledge of FBI undercover operations, told Cruz.
The Texas senator also demanded to know if FBI agents committed any violent crimes or incited any violent crimes on January 6. Sanborn again declined to answer. Presenting photos of Ray Epps, a man caught on video on both January 5 and 6, imploring people to “go into the Capitol” but has not been charged with any crime, Cruz asked Sanborn whether she knew Epps. “I’m aware of the individual, sir, I don’t have the specific background to him,” Sanborn replied.
Read More
The U.S. First Circuit Court of Appeals ruled on Wednesday that students in the state have no constitutional right to learn about civics while in school.
The ruling, written by U.S. Judge Denise Casper, denied an appeal from the group, upholding a decision rendered from a lower court.
Read More
One of the first questions I ask an artist is if they come from a musical family. Since Anthony Nix was a foster kid who got adopted at age seven, his answer to that question was “I don’t know.”
Read More
A North Carolina court Tuesday upheld the state’s new congressional and state legislative lines, rejecting claims from Democratic groups that it was an unfair gerrymander giving Republicans in the state a big win.
While the case may be appealed, the decision as it stands now could impact the 2022 midterm elections, where Republicans are seeking to reverse Democrats’ narrow House majority. North Carolina is gaining a 14th seat, and the new congressional lines could give Republicans an 11-3 advantage, up from the 8-5 split now.
The Democrats’ lawyers argued during last week’s trial that the map chosen was an extreme outlier that Republicans picked solely for political gain. Republicans, however, said that the new lines were drawn legally and that the court was incapable of determining whether it was too partisan to stand.
Read More
Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds on Tuesday proposed a tax cuts omnibus in her fourth Condition of the State speech.
“Under these high ceilings, next to this marble, among these columns and portraits, it’s tempting to believe that nothing good happens unless we legislate it, regulate it, or fund it. But in the small towns, around kitchen tables, in the fields and back-offices, Iowans understand that we in this building don’t fund anything. They do,” the Republican governor said. “And right now, they’re paying too much.”
Read More
After House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) proposed possible new legislation to limit the practice of insider stock trading among members of Congress, even some within his own ranks have anonymously voiced their opposition to such a plan.
As reported by the New York Post, McCarthy first made the suggestion to Punchbowl News, suggesting such a bill as one of many things he would want to see introduced if the GOP retakes the majority in November. Among other things, his proposal would restrict members to only holding professionally managed funds, as well as prohibit lawmakers from owning stocks in companies that are overseen by committees they serve on.
McCarthy pointed to the example of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), who has a net worth of over $100 million, and whose husband was found to have traded millions more worth of tech stocks. “I just think if you’re the Speaker of the House, you control what comes to the floor, what goes through committee, you have all the power to do everything you want,” McCarthy said on Tuesday. “You can’t be trading millions of dollars.”
Read More
The Consumer Price Index (CPI) increased 0.5% in December, bringing the key inflation indicator’s year-over-year increase to 7%, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) reported.
The CPI soared to 7% on a year-over-year basis in December, the highest level in almost four decades, the BLS reported Wednesday. Economists surveyed by The Wall Street Journal projected the index would soar past 7.1% in December.
“There’s still a lot of scarcity in the economy. Consumers and businesses are in great financial shape, and they’re willing to pay up for more goods, more services and more labor,” Sarah House, director, and senior economist at Wells Fargo, told the WSJ.
Read More
A parents group is claiming documents obtained in a lawsuit over admissions policies to an elite high school prove that a northern Virginia school board had a bias against students of Asian descent.
Purported discussions among members of the Fairfax County School Board mentioned “an anti asian feel underlying” the pursuit of changes to the admissions process for Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology (TJHSST), according to emails, texts, and other documents published by Parents Defending Education (PDE). TJHSST is considered the number one high school in the country by U.S. News and World Report.
“In fall 2020, Fairfax County, Va., school board members said the quiet part out loud,” PDE Vice President for Strategy & Investigations Asra Nomani, wrote in an article on Substack discussing the comments in the alleged discussions.
Read More
Amazon employees in Bessemer, Alabama, are set to hold a second union vote after the first election was deemed illegal, a federal labor agency said Tuesday.
The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) announced that workers at the Bessemer warehouse would vote again on whether to join the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union (RWDSU) on Feb. 4. The second vote comes almost a year after the first election in which Amazon employees overwhelmingly rejected the proposal to join the RWDSU.
Following the unsuccessful unionization bid, labor organizers demanded a new vote, alleging that Amazon improperly placed the election ballot box on company property, which the union argued was a form of intimidation. The union also alleged that Amazon threatened warehouse workers with messages saying the facility might close or they might lose benefits if the union vote succeeded.
Read More
Out of dozens of lines showing millions of dollars for Missouri’s supplemental budget, one sticks out in House Bill 3014.
There are 25 lines, each representing a department or office in Missouri government, requesting a 5.5% cost of living adjustment for all state employees. Gov. Mike Parson announced the increases and a base pay of $15 per hour in December.
Read More
As the 2021-2022 legislative year begins in Virginia, one bill would mandate security protocols for school board meetings statewide.
HB 12 says schools would be required to “limit to the lowest feasible number the entry points in each public school building in the local school division” and “ensure that each individual who seeks to enter any school building in the local school division is screened with a handheld metal detector wand by a school security officer or another appropriate school board employee who is appropriately trained in such method of screening.”
Read More