Month: October 2023

Commentary: Americans Demand Citizens First Immigration Policy

Virginia Star Staff

Americans are rethinking an immigration policy carried over from last century that has worn out its welcome and contributed to a disturbing loss of opportunities for the middle class over the past six decades.  

While the illegal immigrant crisis is an obvious and glaring issue that needs to be solved as soon as the next Administration is in place, conservatives are reevaluating immigration policy as a whole and beginning to see cracks in the cheap labor movement that resulted from the 1965 Immigration Act.

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Victim Who Was Sexually Assaulted by Trans Student Files Lawsuit Against Loudoun County School District

Virginia Star Staff

A former female student, who was sexually assaulted by a male student claiming to be transgender, filed a lawsuit Wednesday against Loudoun County Public Schools (LCPS) for allegedly covering up the attack, according to court documents.

The assault was first reported in 2021 by the Daily Wire after the student’s father, Scott Smith, was arrested for disorderly conduct at a board meeting after he demanded that the board admit they covered up his daughter’s attack. Now the student and her parents, identified in the lawsuit as Jane Doe, Jane Roe and John Doe respectively, are suing the district for $30 million for its “indifference to sexual assault” and failure to protect Jane Doe from harm, according to court documents.

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Commentary: Marxist Events Held ‘Coast to Coast’ Across United States

Virginia Star Staff

Communism has killed over 100 million people and immiserated countless more. But that won’t stop a group called the International Marxist Tendency (IMT), which is running its 2023 Marxist School “from coast to coast” over the coming months.

The first event, already held in Minneapolis, will be followed by three more in New York City; Phoenix, Arizona; and Bellingham, Washington through mid-November.

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More than 255,000 Apprehended at Southern Border in September

The Center Square

At least 255,212 foreign nationals were apprehended or reported evading capture after illegally entering the southwest border in September, according to preliminary Border Patrol data obtained by The Center Square.

This includes at least 222,009 apprehensions and 33,203 gotaways. “Gotaways” is the official U.S. Customs and Border Protection term that refers to the number of people known and reported to illegally enter the U.S. between ports of entry who intentionally try to evade capture and don’t return to Mexico.

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Fox News Cancels Speaker of the House Debate After Candidates Pull Out

Virginia Star Staff

Fox News has reportedly canceled a debate between Republican candidates for the speakership of the House of Representatives after multiple candidates withdrew from the planned program on Friday.

Fox had announced that it would host a forum between House Majority Leader Steve Scalise and Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan — the two candidates who have announced campaigns for the job — as well as Republican Study Committee Chairman Kevin Hern, who is considering a campaign, to discuss their suitability for the job, from which Rep. Kevin McCarthy of California was removed on Tuesday. However, following criticism from House Republicans, all three candidates decided to withdraw from the conversation, which led Fox News to cancel the whole program, according to multiple reports.

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Debt-Laden Companies Are Headed Toward Doom as Interest Rates Take Their Toll

Virginia Star Staff

Companies around the world could be in trouble in the first half of 2024 as the rising cost of debt due to heightened interest rates threatens a half-trillion dollar refinancing scramble, according to Reuters.

Businesses, particularly across Europe, the Middle East and Africa, that previously borrowed when rates were low and businesses that need to take out new loans to meet capital requirements need around $500 billion in the next half-year for refinancing to avoid cutting operations, according to Reuters, citing analysis from restructuring consultancy Alverez & Marsal. The value of company loans in the next six-month period is projected to be higher than any other similar period until the end of 2025, threatening businesses that will need to borrow during that time and risking corporate failures.

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Liz Cheney Calls Trump’s Actions on January 6th as ‘Evil as You Can Imagine’

Zachery Schmidt

Liz Cheney said Thursday that what former President Donald Trump did on January 6th is as “evil as you can imagine” and as much of a “dereliction of duty of an American president we have ever seen.”

“[Trump was watching [the riot] on television, and he thought the mob was doing the right thing. And no matter how many times people pleaded with him to tell the mobs to go home, he wouldn’t do it,” the former Wyoming representative said in a talk at the University of Montana’s 2023 Mansfield Center Lecture series. “And did he not do it for over three hours, but in the middle of the violence, when the attack was happening, he sent out a tweet saying that Mike Pence didn’t have the courage to do what Trump wanted him to do.

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America Adds over 300,000 Jobs in September as Interest Rates Remain Elevated

Virginia Star Staff

The U.S. added 336,000 nonfarm payroll jobs in September as the unemployment rate remained at 3.8%, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) data released Friday.

Economists had anticipated that the country would add 170,000 jobs in September compared to 187,000 in August and that the unemployment rate would slide down to 3.7% from 3.8%, according to Reuters. Private employment data for September showed that only 89,000 jobs were added for the month, as the professional and business services, trade, transportations and utilities and manufacturing services sectors all had substantial losses, according to ADP.

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Commentary: Hillary’s ‘Deprogramming’ Wish and the FBI’s Latest Excuse to Hunt MAGA ‘Terrorists’

Julie Kelly

To the surprise of no one paying attention, Newsweek just confirmed the FBI is targeting supporters of Donald Trump in advance of the 2024 election. “The federal government believes that the threat of violence and major civil disturbances around the 2024 U.S. presidential election is so great that it has quietly created a new category of extremists that it seeks to track and counter: Donald Trump’s army of MAGA followers,” investigative journalist William M. Arkin reported on October 5.

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Virginia Democrats’ Mega-Donor, Wife Back Cam-Girl Delegate Hopeful with $310K

Neil W. McCabe

When the votes are counted in Virginia after the November 7 off-cycle legislative elections, in a big way, it is a referendum on the political effectiveness of a mega-wealthy money manager who has devoted himself to Old Dominion politics—and who is not Republican Governor Glenn Youngkin.

Instead, that man is Micheal Bills, who has given more than $15 million in direct contributions to Democratic candidates.

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Starbucks Shutters Seven Stores in Crime-Ridden Parts of San Francisco

Virginia Star Staff

Starbucks plans to close seven stores located in downtown San Francisco in October, a spokesperson for the company confirmed.

The corporation looked into “several factors” when it decided to close the seven locations, and added that it would continue to invest in San Francisco through its 40 other company-owned locations in the city, a Starbucks spokesperson told the Daily Caller News Foundation. Although the company declined to comment on whether crime was a factor that led to its decision, all seven of the closing locations — Mission & Main, Geary & Taylor, 425 Battery, 398 Market St, 4th & Market, 555 California and Bush & Van Ness — are situated in or near the city’s troubledTenderloin district, a Starbucks store map showed.

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Air Force Sued over Free Speech Rights of Airman Who Called Out Cancel Culture While in Uniform

Virginia Star Staff

A Space Force reservist filed a lawsuit against the Air Force, Space Force and the Department of Defense on Tuesday alleging he faced unlawful punishment for speaking out against cancel culture and progressive policies during a private event.

First Liberty Institute, law firm Winston & Strawn and the Ave Maria School of Law Veterans and Servicemembers Law Clinic filed the lawsuit on behalf of Jace Yarbrough, who in 2021 was invited to speak at a retirement ceremony for SMSgt Duane Fish allegedly in a personal capacity, according to a press release. After an unnamed Navy member present at the ceremony complained about the contents of the speech, the Air Force censured Yarbrough, now a Major in the Air Force Reserve and attorney.

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Federal Debt Increased by $2.2 Trillion in Fiscal Year 2023

Virginia Star Staff

The federal government’s debt increased by $2,238,422,431,416.43 in fiscal 2023, according to data published by the U.S. Treasury Department.

On Sept. 30, 2022, the last day of fiscal 2022, the federal debt was $30,928,911,613,306.73, according to Treasury Department data. By Sept. 29, 2023, the last business day of fiscal 2023, it had climbed to $33,167,334,044,723.16.

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Commentary: The Era of ‘Just Do It’ Government

RealClearWire

Tim Scott did the impossible at last week’s Republican debate: He made me nostalgic for the politics of President Lyndon Baines Johnson.

This was not the intent of South Carolina’s junior senator, as he condemned LBJ for creating programs during the 1960s that continue to undermine the very people they promised to help. “Black families survived slavery,” Scott said. “We survived poll taxes and literacy tests. We survived discrimination being woven into the laws of our country. What was hard to survive was Johnson’s Great Society, where they decided to put money – where they decided to take the black father out of the household to get a check in the mail. And you can now measure that in unemployment, in crime, in devastation.”

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Commentary: Biden Administration Now Wants to Ban Furnaces

Virginia Star Staff

In an attempt to force Americans to conserve energy, the Department of Energy is banning a whole class of popular furnaces, eventually raising heating costs and reducing product choices for families and businesses alike. And it is using an outdated law to give itself the authority to do so.

While the DOE did recognize many of the comments that I submitted arguing against its attempt to regulate gas furnaces, it did little more than brush them off. Unfortunately, higher costs and less choice won’t be so easy for American families and businesses to ignore. 

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Josh Hawley Introduces Legislation to Allow Border States to Deport Illegal Immigrants

Virginia Star Staff

Because the Biden regime refuses to enforce federal immigration laws, Senator Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) this week introduced legislation that would allow states to defend their borders themselves.

The State Border Defense Act would allow California, Arizona, New Mexico and Texas to place barriers on federal lands or water along the southern border and allow them to prosecute and remove illegal immigrants from the country.

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Americans’ Support for Arming Ukraine Dries Up as War Drags On: Poll

Virginia Star Staff

Support for arming Ukraine in its fight against Russian aggression has dropped among Americans across the political spectrum, according to a Thursday poll.

Only 41% of Americans believe the federal government “should provide weapons to Ukraine,” a five-point decrease since May, according to a Reuters/Ipsos survey. Though some respondents were unsure, 35% of Americans disagreed with the notion that the U.S. should be sending weapons to Ukraine.

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Biden Nominee to Protect Son Hunter from Whistleblowers, Oversight Chair Says

Virginia Star Staff

President Joe Biden has nominated a former colleague of his son Hunter Biden—they worked together at a law firm representing Ukrainian energy company Burisma—to run an internal watchdog agency in his administration. 

Biden tapped lawyer Hampton Dellinger on Tuesday to lead the Office of the Special Counsel, an agency that primarily investigates whistleblower complaints and misuse of federal office for partisan political ends.

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Congress Preaches Spending Cuts While Allowing Its Own Budget to Explode by 38 Percent Since 2014

Just the News

While many lawmakers have preached for years the need for federal spending cuts, the amount of taxpayer money that Congress spends on its own operations has swelled 38% since FY2014 from $4.3 billion to $6.9 billion this year, according to a Just the News review of Congressional Research Service (CRS) reports on annual federal budgets. 

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Commentary: Our Establishment’s Alternate Realities

Virginia Star Staff

One common denominator that explains why previously successful societies implode is their descent into fantasies. A collective denial prevents even discussion of existential threats and their solutions.

Something like that is happening in the United States. Eight million illegal immigrants have entered the United States by the deliberate erasure of the southern border.

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Crops Predicted to Yield Average Harvest for Virginia

The Center Square

Despite drought conditions, Virginia crops are likely to produce average yields this harvest season.

Broilers (chickens raised for meat production), cattle and turkeys are the commonwealth’s top farm commodities, according to data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture from 2021. Still, “miscellaneous” crops, including vegetables, barley, mushrooms, sunflowers and other field crops, are the state’s next highest-grossing commodity.

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Schools Cannot Ban ‘Merely Offensive’ Speech on Gender Identity, Appeals Court Rules

Just the News

Fifty-six years after it exempted antiwar teenagers from First Amendment protections while on campus, a federal appeals court in America’s heartland affirmed students’ speech rights in public schools on an equally contentious subject today.

The St. Louis-based 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals issued a preliminary injunction Monday against an Iowa school district policy that threatens suspension and expulsion for “intentional and/or persistent refusal … to respect” a peer’s gender identity, finding it’s likely too vague to survive legal scrutiny.

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Biden Reverses Course, Allows Border Wall Construction to Resume

The Center Square

In a stunning reversal on border security policy, the Biden administration plans to build about 20 miles of border wall in south Texas as the surge in illegal migration into the U.S. continued in September.

President Joe Biden, when he first took office in January 2021, ended all border wall construction initiated by the administration for former President Donald Trump.

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Commentary: DC’s Revolving Door Is Swinging Briskly for the Eco-Green Eyeshade People

RealClearWire

Washington’s revolving door is getting a fresh green paint job: Federal architects of a controversial new rule requiring businesses to measure their carbon footprints throughout their supply chains have joined a start-up company poised to reap millions by performing those calculations.

At least three ranking Securities and Exchange Commission officials have joined Persefoni, a company formed in 2020 for the purpose of measuring such footprints of large business enterprises. 

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20 Senate Republicans Vow to Block All Non-Budget Legislation

Just the News

Florida GOP Sen. Rick Scott is leading a bloc of 19 other Senate Republicans in an effort to stonewall all legislation unrelated to government funding until Congress approves all of its appropriations bills.

The lawmakers warned Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer of their intentions amid an intense congressional battle over spending that saw House conservatives take the unprecedented step of ousting Speaker Kevin McCarthy. At issue are 12 annual spending bills, which Congress must approve by Nov. 17 following the passage of a continuing resolution this weekend to avert a government shutdown.

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Committee Docs Shed Light on Hunter Biden’s Escort Payments, Potential Mann Act Violations

Just the News

The documents released by the House Ways and Means Committee last week shed new light on Hunter Biden’s reported interactions with escorts, including his claiming a tax deduction for payments to the women as business expenses. The documents also disclose documentation of investigators considering Mann Act charges.

Contained in the highly redacted documents the House Ways and Means Committee released last Wednesday are an interview with an “escort” identified as Gulnora and with Hunter Biden’s tax accountant who helped him prepare his tax returns for 2017 and 2018.

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Biden Admin Announces Another $9 Billion Student Debt Giveaway

Virginia Star Staff

The Biden administration announced nearly $9 billion in student loan relief Wednesday that will affect about 125,000 borrowers, according to a press release.

The Supreme Court ruled 6-3 in June that the Biden administration could not cancel student loan debt for non-Pell Grant and Pell Grant recipients, and soon after on June 30 the Department of Education (ED) announced plans to expand income-driven repayment plans, which would cut payments for those making $32,800 or less annually to $0, potentially costing American taxpayers hundreds of billions. Now, the Biden administration has announced a new plan that will add $9 billion in student loan relief through additional forgiveness and income-driven-repayment programs, according to an ED press release.

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Minnesota Police Find 11 Illegal Immigrants in House Where Girl Reported Sexual Assault

Virginia Star Staff

Police in Bemidji, Minnesota, found 11 illegal immigrants in a local house after a minor was allegedly sexually assaulted, the Bemidji Police Department said in a recent Facebook post.

The Sanford Bemidji Medical Center’s Emergency Department alerted the Bemidji Police Department to the situation involving a girl that stated she’d been sexually assaulted, according to the Facebook post. Authorities arrested Oscar Ernesto Luna, 22, who is now charged with first degree criminal sexual conduct, and handed the 11 illegal immigrants to Border Patrol.

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Vance Bill Would Require Actual Gender on U.S. Passports

Virginia Star Staff

Sen. J.D. Vance is introducing legislation requiring a person’s actual, biological gender on their United States passports.

The Ohio Republican’s Passport Sanity Act would require the secretary of state to ensure that all applications for passports, passport cards, or Consular Report of Birth Abroad documentation include only the gender designations of male and female, prohibiting any passport documentation that includes the unspecified X gender designation.

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Commentary: The Matt Gaetz Fight

Virginia Star Staff

Matt Gaetz did with seven other votes what Kevin McCarthy could not do with more than half of the House chamber. He imposed his will.

The general commanding a majority of the troops on the field capitulated to Democrats to keep the federal leviathan, nay, the federal Cthulhu swinging its tentacles and snapping its claws. The general with fewer troops behind him imposed the change he desired, meaning he deposed the speaker he characterized as a liar.

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Wisconsin U.S. Senator Ron Johnson Pushes Shutdown Prevention Bill to End ‘Stupid Exercise’

M.D. Kittle

Another game of shutdown chicken ended last weekend with the status quo and the ousting of House Speaker Kevin McCarthy.

U.S. Senator Ron Johnson (R-WI) says its time to end the senseless — and costly — practice of shutdown politics.

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Mayor Eric Adams to Travel to Latin America to Discourage Migrants from Coming to New York City

Virginia Star Staff

Democratic New York City Mayor Eric Adams will visit Latin America to warn migrants not to come to the city, he said during a press conference on Tuesday.

Adams will visit Ecuador, Colombia, Mexico and the Darien Gap in Panama, he told reporters. The trip will last four days and is scheduled to take place this week, the Associated Press reported.

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DNC Concerned over Diversity Numbers Among Delegates

Virginia Star Staff

Leaders of the Democratic National Committee (DNC) are increasingly worried about the lack of diversity among its delegates ahead of the 2024 presidential election.

As Politico reports, the DNC is falling short of its own self-imposed goals for diversity levels, with some senior officials concerned over how many White delegates there will be at the convention next year.

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