Day: October 17, 2022

Virginia Delegate Guzman Abruptly Changes Course on Bill That Would Have Criminalized Parents Who Do Not ‘Affirm’ Their LGBT Child

Virginia Star Staff

Virginia Democrat State Delegate Elizabeth Guzman has backed down from introducing a bill that would have expanded the definition of child abuse to include parents inflicting “physical or mental injury” on children due to their gender identity or sexual orientation.

The Epoch Times reports that Guzman first began drafting such legislation in order to counter Virginia GOP Governor Glenn Youngkin’s transgender policies in which parents of transgender children had to be made aware if their child wanted to transition or go by a different name at school.

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Apartment Demand Drops to 30-Year Low as Renters Lose Confidence in the Market

Virginia Star Staff

Apartment demand in the third quarter of 2022 dropped into the negative for the first time in 30 years as many renters have lost confidence in the market due to economic uncertainty, according to RealPage analytics.

Rental markets boomed at the start of 2022, but Q3 data shows a 1.0% increase in apartment vacancies despite a 0.2% month-over-month asking price decrease in September, RealPage reported. Weak rental numbers, despite the first month-over-month asking price drop since December 2020, point to a general economic uncertainty among renters who have adopted a “wait and see” mentality, the outlet reported.

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Virginia September Tax Revenues Down, Reflecting Tax Rebates

Eric Burk

Virginia’s September General Fund tax revenues hit nearly $1.9 billion, less than last year’s September revenues of $2.6 billion, but the governor’s office emphasized that the decrease was expected as a result of tax policy changes. Adjusted for those changes, tax revenues were up 10.7 percent year over year.

“Adjusted for the impacts of planned policy actions, including the historic tax rebates of nearly $900 million recently delivered to Virginians, September revenue collection increased more than 10 percent compared to a year ago,” Governor Glenn Youngkin said in a Friday press release. “September is a typically strong month for revenues, and this year was consistent with that precedent. At the same time, economic data remains mixed, the job market shows stability but the persistent inflation from misguided efforts in Washington continues to be the silent thief stealing more and more from the paychecks of hardworking Virginians.”

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Minnesota’s Hastings Public School Children Have Access to Sexually Graphic and Illustrated ‘Gender Queer’ Book

Virginia Star Staff

Children in the Hastings Public Schools district can easily get their hands on a book titled “Gender Queer” that includes illustrations of sexual acts, a school board member said.

In an interview conducted by Minnesota Senate candidate Tom Dippel, Hastings school board member Carrie Tate confirmed that the controversial graphic novel by Maia Kobabe is available to schoolchildren in the district. The book depicts oral sex and masturbation.

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Commentary: Voter Rolls Are Essential to Victory in the Election Integrity Fight

Virginia Star Staff

Voter rolls are the most important election integrity documents. They tell election officials who is eligible to vote. The voter rolls also tell election officials where to send mail ballots, so it is even more important that they are accurate in states that automatically send registered voters mail ballots.

It is essential that states have accurate and up to date voter rolls. This includes removing individuals who moved, have died, and duplicate registrants. Many states across the country are failing to do this essential voter list maintenance that is required by federal law.

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Commentary: Karl Marx’s Gravest Miscalculation

Virginia Star Staff

I recently had occasion to re-read Karl Marx’s seminal Communist Manifesto. It had been nearly twenty years since my first reading of the text in graduate school and I remembered little beyond class antagonisms, Marx’s materialism, and the exploitation of the proletariat. But the ongoing crisis in Venezuela led me to once again reflect on the Socialist and Communist Philosophy underneath the unfolding crisis.

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‘Shocking’: EcoHealth Alliance Receives Another Round of Funding for Coronavirus Bat Research in Asia

The Center Square
Anthony Fauci

A coalition of leading House Republicans is raising the alarm and demanding answers after the Biden administration approved another round of grant funding for research on coronaviruses and bats in Asia.

The lawmakers sent a letter to Anthony Fauci, who leads the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and serves as the chief medical advisor to President Joe Biden.

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Border Authorities Discover New Version of Rainbow Fentanyl

Virginia Star Staff

Border authorities encountered a new form of rainbow fentanyl that smugglers attempted to bring into the U.S., Nogales Port Director Michael W. Humphries said in a tweet Tuesday.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) on Sunday seized around 413,000 fentanyl pills, 44,000 of which “had the rainbow colors combined in each pill.” Humphries said the new version of the pills was “not encountered before” as the area continues to see seizures of the new type of candy-colored drug.

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Prosecutors: U.S. Election Firm Gave Chinese Workers ‘SuperAdministration’ Access to Election Data

Just the News

A U.S. election technology company currently embroiled in scandal gave Chinese subcontractors high-level security access to American election data, according to a warrant filed by prosecutors this week in Los Angeles.

Authorities earlier this month arrested Eugene Yu, the CEO of the election software company Konnech, on charges of grand theft and embezzlement related to his work with that firm. Controversy has also swirled over Konnech’s alleged storage of poll worker data in servers located in the People’s Republic of China.

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Report: Pfizer Board Member Helped Convince Twitter to Ban Vaccine Critic Alex Berenson

Virginia Star Staff
Alex Berenson

Pfizer board member Scott Gottlieb, M.D. played a major role in COVID “vaccine” critic Alex Berenson suspended from Twitter in the summer of 2021, according to emails obtained through discovery in Berenson’s lawsuit against the social media giant. Gottlieb worked with former Biden White House senior coronavirus adviser Andrew Slavitt to suppress Berenson’s influential voice as the administration was preparing to impose boosters and vaccine mandates on the American public.

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Clinics Sees Surge in Reproductive Sterilization Procedures amid Tightening Abortion Laws

Just the News

Planned Parenthoods and other clinics in some regions are seeing considerable surges in reproductive sterilization procedures for both men and women amid the tightening of abortion laws around the country following the repeal of Roe v. Wade earlier this year. 

The abortion clinic told the Associated Press that its clinics in Missouri have seen “a surge in demand” for vasectomies following the Roe repeal, while tubal litigations have also increased in frequency in the area.

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