Day: April 11, 2022

Support Grows Among Republicans for Naming a Special Counsel to Investigate Hunter Biden

Virginia Star Staff

Nearly 100 House Republicans are urging Attorney General Merrick Garland to appoint a special counsel to investigate Hunter Biden’s foreign business deals, saying they had the hallmarks of an influence peddling scandal.

The letter led by Reps. Tom Rice (R-S.C.) and Jim Banks (R-Ind.), the chair of the House GOP Study Committee, comes as the U.S. attorney in Delaware enters his third year investigating Hunter Biden’s taxes, foreign lobbying and money movements.

In all, 95 House GOP members signed the letter.

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Commentary: The Right Should Not Protect Woke Capital

Virginia Star Staff
Disney's Animal Kingdom Tree of Life

For nearly 70 years, families have traveled to Disney for vacation, not indoctrination.

Sadly, America’s preeminent entertainment company has joined a growing list of corporations bent on pushing woke ideologies.

For decades, Congress has unthinkingly supported these companies. Conservatives need to reassess whether Disney’s bottom line is worth protecting.  

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Amazon Prepares to Go on the Offensive Against Newly Unionized Employees

Virginia Star Staff

Amazon plans to go on the offensive against the Amazon Labor Union (ALU) following its successful bid to unionize Amazon workers on April 1 in New York City, according to legal documents filed with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB).

Amazon intends to appeal the Amazon Labor Union’s victory in a 55% majority vote at a Staten Island, New York City warehouse to unionize the facility’s workers. The company argues that labor groups influenced the outcome of the vote.

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Wind Energy Company Fined $8 Million for Killing 150 Eagles

Virginia Star Staff

On Tuesday, a wind energy company was found guilty in federal court of killing over 150 eagles with their wind turbines over the course of the last ten years.

The Daily Caller reports that ESI Energy, a subsidiary of NextEra Energy, pleaded guilty in a federal court in Wyoming to violating the Migratory Bird Treaty Act. ESI had failed to apply for a special permit granted to some wind energy companies that provides them immunity from inevitable bird strike deaths caused by the massive propellers of the wind turbines.

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Grammy Winner Rory Feek Celebrates Self-Reliance with First-of-Its-Kind ‘Homestead Festival’ in Tennessee

Virginia Star Staff

The Homestead Festival, a first-of-its-kind outdoor event, will make its debut on June 3-4, 2022, at Grammy-winning and New York Times best-selling author Rory Feek’s 100-acre historic farm in Columbia, Tennessee. Combining music and meaning, the two-day affair features musical performances, including headliner Kevin Costner and Modern West, as well as master-class lectures by prominent homesteading community leaders such as Dr. Temple Grandin, Joel Salatin, Justin Rhodes, and many others.

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Cartels Selling Fentanyl to Migrants, Locals in Northern Mexico

Virginia Star Staff
Fentanyl

As cartels continue to devastate American communities with fentanyl, they’re now finding more customers for the drug in northern Mexico, Noticias Telemundo reported.

Migrants and locals just south of the border, in areas like Tijuana, Mexico, are seeing more users on the streets turning to the drug, the report detailed.

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15 Attorneys General Call on Department of Education to Halt Revising Title IX Regulations

The Center Square

Montana Attorney General Austin Knudsen, leading a coalition of 15 Republican attorneys general, has called on the U.S. Department of Education (DOE) to cancel its plan to revise Title IX.

The DOE’s plan to do so, they argue, appears to be an attempt by the federal government to infringe on parental rights in education, erode the rights of women’s and girls’ sports, and reverse existing guarantees for victims of sexual harassment and assault.

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Bird Flu Outbreak Spreads to 25 States

The Center Square

The number of commercial and backyard flocks with confirmed avian flu increased by 36% in the past week, according to data on the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) website.

Three of the 57 new cases reported were in Missouri, bringing the state total to nine cases of Highly Pathogenic Avian Flu Influenza (HPAI) in seven counties—Bates, Dade, Gentry, Jasper, Lawrence, Ralls and Stoddard. Approximately 421,000 birds were in those flocks.

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Alabama Passes Bill Banning Child Sex Change Treatments, Jailing Doctors Who Transition Kids

Virginia Star Staff

The Alabama legislature passed a bill Thursday criminalizing sex change treatments for children including puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones and sex-change surgeries.

The bill, if signed by Gov. Kay Ivey, would treat the castration of children and other sex-change treatments as Class C felonies which, according to Politico, carry a penalty of up to ten years in prison for medical practitioners.

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Moderna Recalls More than 750,000 COVID-19 Vaccine Doses After ‘Foreign Body’ Found in Lot

Virginia Star Staff

The pharmaceutical company Moderna on Friday recalled 764,900 doses of its Spikevax COVID-19 vaccine after a “foreign body” was found in a vial.

The contaminated lot was manufactured at a contract manufacturing site, ROVI, in Spain, and was distributed in mid-January 2022 in Norway, Poland, Portugal, Sweden and Spain, according to a company press release.

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Commentary: Biden Detailee Entangled in Secret Service Bribery Scheme

Virginia Star Staff

More details are emerging about the four Secret Service employees entangled in an alleged bribery scheme carried out by two men accused of masquerading as Department of Homeland Security law enforcement agents.

An affidavit filed Wednesday night in U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C. revealed that one of the Secret Service agents involved in the bribery scheme was a special agent assigned to First Lady Jill Biden’s protective detail. Another was a Uniformed Division officer at the White House.

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Youngkin Signs 100 Bills, Including Bill Requiring Notification to Parents of Sexually Explicit Instructional Material In Schools

Eric Burk

Facing an April 11 deadline, Governor Glenn Youngkin signed over 100 bills last week, including Senator Siobhan Dunnavant’s (R-Henrico) SB 656, a bill requiring Virginia public schools to notify parents about sexually explicit instructional material, allow parental review, and provide non-explicit alternatives. The bill instructs the Department of Education to create model policies and requires school boards to pass similar policies.

“These kinds of materials that are being presented in school as an opportunity to develop that relationship between the parent and the child, talk about uncomfortable and challenging things,” Dunnavant said in the Senate Committee on Education and Health in February. “We heard in testimony from the subject matter experts that there was not a consistent policy across the school boards in Virginia, and that it was extremely variable. And as a result, having clear guidelines from the Department of Education would accomplish exactly what everybody thinks already exists, but it doesn’t.”

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