Day: November 16, 2023

George Santos Announces He Will Not Run for Re-Election

Virginia Star Staff

Republican Rep. George Santos of New York’s 3rd District announced that he will not seek reelection to the House of Representatives following the release of a report by the House Ethics Committee regarding his actions.

Santos was indicted by federal prosecutors in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York for a number of alleged felonies related to his 2022 congressional campaign, including wire fraud, false statements, identity theft and credit card fraud, among others. After the House Ethics Committee released a report corroborating the allegations of prosecutors following its independent investigation of the matter, Santos announced on Twitter that he would not seek re-election to his office in 2024.

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Police Arrest Suspect in Death of Jewish Protester

Virginia Star Staff

Officers announced on Thursday that they have arrested a suspect in connection to the death of Paul Kessler.

Kessler, a Jewish man who was participating in a pro-Israel demonstration, died from a blow to the head after allegedly getting into a physical altercation with a pro-Palestinian protester. Police said that they arrested Loay Analji on Thursday morning in connection with Kessler’s death for involuntary manslaughter, according to a press release from the Ventura County Sheriff’s Department.

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Videos of People Sympathizing with Bin Laden’s ‘Letter to America’ Go Viral

Virginia Star Staff

Videos showing people reading Osama bin Laden’s 2002 letter justifying the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon went viral Wednesday evening, prompting a media outlet to delete its translation of the document.

The Guardian deleted the letter Wednesday after it had been active on the site since being published on Nov. 24, 2002, directing readers to an article from that date about the letter. Videos on the Chinese-owned social media app TikTok showed users reading the letter, Rolling Stone reported.

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Virginia Mosque Comes Out in Support of Hamas

Virginia Star Staff

The Manassas Mosque, a mosque in the Washington, DC area, explicitly declared its support for the Hamas terrorist organization in a recent newsletter. The mosque’s support for the Iranian regime has raised the concern of several congressmen.

The newsletter, which was first noticed by the Capital Research Center in collaboration with Focus on Western Islamism, states:

We stand firmly with the Palestinian Resistance (Hamas) and the courageous people of Palestine. With the help of Allah (swt), they will bring liberation and justice to Palestine and to the rest of the world. The Israeli regime is weak and afraid of all the calls for the freedom of Palestine taking place all over the globe. The regime’s days are numbered.

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Meta Is Allowing Political Ads That Question the 2020 Election — But Censoring Doubts About 2024

Virginia Star Staff

Meta’s social media platforms now allow political ads questioning the 2020 presidential election, but will censor ads questioning the 2024 election, The Wall Street Journal reported on Wednesday.

The company permits fraud claims about past elections but not current or future ones, according to its updated policy. Meta rolled out the policy after blocking certain Republicans during the 2022 midterm election primaries from releasing ads with assertions about the 2020 election being fraudulent, according to the WSJ.

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Inflation Still Biting Homebuyers as Headline Number Falls

Virginia Star Staff

The price of shelter increased substantially in October despite topline month-to-month inflation remaining flat, dashing many Americans’ dreams of buying a home, according to The Wall Street Journal.

Inflation decelerated to 3.2% in October, down from 3.7% in September, owing to substantial deflation in the price of energy, but the shelter sector individually had prices increase by 5.5% for the year. Since the beginning of 2021, when President Joe Biden first took office, home prices have risen 29%, rents are up 17% and mortgage rates have neared 8%, according to the WSJ.

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Near-Record Number of Illegal Immigrants Are Crossing the Northern Border

Virginia Star Staff

Border Patrol encounters of migrants crossing the northern border illegally hit a two-decade high in October, according to recently updated Customs and Border Protection (CBP) data.

There were 1,521 such encounters recorded in October alone, according to the data. The last time monthly encounters surpassed that number was in August 2001, when Border Patrol recorded 2,016, according to federal data.

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Commentary: NewsGuard Is a Surrogate the Feds Pay to Keep Watch on the Internet and Be a Judge of the Truth

RealClearWire

In May 2021, L. Gordon Crovitz, a media executive turned start-up investor, pitched Twitter executives on a powerful censorship tool. 

In an exchange that came to light in the “Twitter Files” revelations about media censorship, Crovitz, former publisher of the Wall Street Journal, touted his product, NewsGuard, as a “Vaccine Against Misinformation.” His written pitch highlighted a “separate product” – beyond an extension already on the Microsoft Edge browser – “for internal use by content-moderation teams.” Crovitz promised an out-of-the-box tool that would use artificial intelligence powered by NewsGuard algorithms to rapidly screen content based on hashtags and search terms the company associated with dangerous content.

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YoungkinWatch: Governor’s Allies Retain Virginia House Leadership Positions Despite GOP Losses

Tom Pappert

The Republican members of the Virginia House of Delegates chose legislators considered allies of Governor Glenn Youngkin (R) for party leadership last Sunday, including one who spent over $500,000 to win a district considered safe for Republicans after Virginia’s 2021 redistricting.

Virginia Republicans chose House Speaker Todd Gilbert (R-Shenandoah) to become the party’s new Minority Leader in the House of Delegates, and Delegate Amanda Batten (R-York) will retain her position as the Republican Caucus Chair.

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Citigroup Set to Begin Massive Layoffs

Virginia Star Staff

One of the U.S.’ top banks will begin massive layoffs on Wednesday in a corporate overhaul as the company seeks to trim its operating expenses to levels more in line with its competitors, according to CNBC.

Citigroup will begin cutting employees on Wednesday, with new terminations continuing to be announced through next week, affecting some chiefs of staff, managing directors and lower-level employees, according to CNBC. Following the initial round of layoffs, more employees in less senior positions are expected to be dismissed in February, with the layoffs being expected to be fully completed by March 2024.

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Oklahoma Supreme Court Keeps Block on Three State Laws Restricting Abortion

Virginia Star Staff

The Oklahoma Supreme Court ruled against three of the state’s pro-life laws Tuesday, arguing that they would inhibit a woman’s right under the state constitution to get an abortion to protect her health, according to court documents.

The three laws in question require doctors to be board-certified in obstetrics and gynecology, to have admitting privileges at a nearby hospital and requiring doctors to perform an ultrasound 72 hours before administering any drugs used to initiate an abortion, according to the Associated Press. Several pro-abortion groups including Planned Parenthood (PP) and the Center for Reproductive Rights (CRR) sued the state, arguing the laws were unconstitutional and the state Supreme Court agreed to place a temporary halt while the lawsuit runs its course, according to the ruling.

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Commentary: The Demographics of Polarization

Virginia Star Staff

Women around the world are having fewer than two children. But while population decline is well underway in most nations, there are a handful of nations that are still experiencing a population explosion. The implications of this challenge the foundations of cultural and national independence, most particularly in nations whose populations have stopped reproducing. The nations still experiencing rapid population growth have cultural traditions that stand in stark contrast to the nations with stable and declining populations. These profound demographic and cultural differences, when combined with a massive and ongoing transfer of people from high birth-rate nations into low birth-rate nations, introduces the potential for polarization on an almost unimaginable scale.

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Dem-Controlled FCC Votes in Favor of New Rules to Combat ‘Digital Discrimination’ in Broadband Access

Virginia Star Staff

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) passed a vote related to “preventing digital discrimination” in accessing broadband internet at a meeting on Wednesday.

The FCC, which has three Democratic commissioners and two Republicans, voted along party lines in favor of a notice of proposed rulemaking Wednesday at the meeting to tackle “digital discrimination,” based on President Joe Biden’s 2021 Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act. FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr asserts the rules would massively increase the commission’s regulatory authority to almost all facets of internet service.

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