House Committee Examines Threats to U.S. Food Security from Chinese Ownership of Land, Facilities

Combine in field

The House Agriculture Committee took a close look Wednesday at the influence of China on America’s food supply.

The committee also heard testimony concerning Chinese companies activities in the U.S., allegedly stealing intellectual property and purchasing supply chain assets that American farmers depend on to produce crops.

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Mayorkas, DHS Get Massive Funding Boost in House’s Newest Spending Bill

Alejandro Mayorkas speaking with border officers

The House of Representatives’ second consolidated spending bill for fiscal year 2024 includes significant increases in funding for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and to the office of its secretary, Alejandro Mayorkas.

The 2024 fiscal year began on Oct. 1, 2023 — by which the appropriations process was supposed to be completed — but political disagreements in Congress led to the enactment of four continuing resolutions to avoid a government shutdown and preserve funding at the previous year’s levels. After Congress completely passed its first permanent spending bill for the year on March 8, the House on Thursday released its second permanent bill, a consolidation of six constituent bills, which includes an increase of $19 million to the Office of the Secretary over fiscal year 2023 levels, for a total of $404 million until Sept. 30, 2024. 

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Progressives, Conservatives Not Happy with EPA’s New Rule on Vehicle Emissions

President Biden driving and electric vehicle

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency said Wednesday it is finalizing more protective emissions standards that it called the “strongest ever” for light-duty and medium-duty vehicles that it claims will reduce air pollution and be phased in from 2027 through 2032.

In a news release, the EPA claimed the standards would result in a reduction of 7 billion tons of carbon emissions and have a net benefit of $100 billion in terms of public health benefits as well as reduced fuel costs and maintenance and repair costs for drivers.

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Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin Vetoes 22 Democratic Crime Bills That ‘Would Have Undermined Public Safety’

Youngkin Virginia

Governor Glenn Youngkin on Wednesday announced that he vetoed 22 crime bill passed by Democrats in the Virginia General Assembly that he said “would have undermined public safety” in the commonwealth.

Youngkin confirmed the 22 vetoes in a press release announcing action on 60 bills. In addition to the vetoes, Youngkin signed 36 bills into law and made amendments to two.

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Commentary: Biden’s DOJ Thumbs Nose at SCOTUS on Key J6 Felony Charge

Matthew Graves

Donald Trump filed his brief Tuesday at the U.S. Supreme Court to defend his argument that presidents are immune from criminal prosecution. Noting the lack of historical precedent and dire ramifications for the future, Trump’s attorneys warned that “a denial of criminal immunity would incapacitate every future President with de facto blackmail and extortion while in office, and condemn him to years of post-office trauma at the hands of political opponents.”

Oral arguments on the groundbreaking question are set for April 25; a final opinion, which could be announced in late May or sometime in June before the current SCOTUS term ends, represents a do-or-die situation for Special Counsel Jack Smith’s four-count indictment against the former president for the events of January 6 and his alleged attempts to “overturn” the 2020 election. The case is now on hold awaiting a decision by SCOTUS.

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Poll: 60 Percent of Independents Disapprove of Biden’s Job as President

A majority of Americans disapprove of the job President Joe Biden is doing, according to a new poll.

The Center Square Voter’s Voice poll released Wednesday asked voters, “When it comes to President Joe Biden, do you approve or disapprove of how he’s handling his job?”

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Watchdog Accuses Biden Judicial Nominee of Trying to Cover Up Financial Conflicts, Demands he Withdraw

Adeel Mangi, Philadelphia federal courthouse

A Biden judicial nominee under fire for ties to an anti-Israel group is now facing a call by the conservative watchdog American Accountability Foundation (AAF) to withdraw for failing to disclose the sources of his income.

AAF sent Adeel Mangi a letter Thursday demanding he ask President Joe Biden to withdraw his nomination for the Third Circuit Court of Appeals, calling Mangi’s failure to include income sources on his Financial Disclosure Report “disqualifying.” Though the White House has doubled down on its support for Mangi, at least one Senate Democrat, Nevada Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto, said Tuesday she would not support him.

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Poll: Third Party Candidates Boost Trump’s Lead over Biden

Donald Trump, RFK, Cornel West

Former President Donald Trump is narrowly beating President Joe Biden in a head-to-head faceoff going into November, a new national poll shows.

The Center Square’s Voter’s Voice poll conducted with Noble Predictive Insights was released Wednesday, showing Trump beating Biden 46 percent-45 percent with likely voters. The rest are unsure.

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Music Spotlight: Kelsey Hickman

Kelsey Hickman

As a product of the 80s music scene, I discovered country music later in life. When country rocker Kelsey Hickman came across my desk, I knew she was right up my alley.

Hickman is from Central Illinois. No one in her family is particularly musical, but she can remember singing all her life. She started as a tot singing Disney songs, then joined school choirs and got her first exposure singing in musicals.

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CBO Reports Grim Long-Term Outlook for Federal Government

Couple paying bills

The Congressional Budget Office on Wednesday released a bleak outlook for the federal government with new projections that show debt levels will reach their highest levels ever in five years.

“Debt held by the public, boosted by the large deficits, reaches its highest level ever in 2029 (measured as a percentage of GDP) and then continues to grow, reaching 166 percent of GDP in 2054 and remaining on track to increase thereafter,” according to the CBO report. “That mounting debt would slow economic growth, push up interest payments to foreign holders of U.S. debt, and pose significant risks to the fiscal and economic outlook; it could also cause lawmakers to feel more constrained in their policy choices.”

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New York AG Letitia James Takes First Step Toward Seizing Trump’s Assets

Letitia James Donald Trump

Democratic New York Attorney General Letitia James recently took the first step towards seizing former President Donald Trump’s assets, public records show.

James filed judgements against Trump, his sons and the Trump Organization on March 6 with the clerk’s office in Westchester County, where Trump owns a golf resort and private estate called Seven Springs, according to Bloomberg News. Judge Arthur Engoron issued a judgement in February finding that Trump must pay $454 million in James’ lawsuit, which alleged he perpetuated financial fraud by overestimating the value of his assets to obtain loans.

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Alan Dershowitz Commentary: Fani Willis Must Still Be Disqualified

Fani Willis

Just as predicted, Judge Scott McAfee tried to cut the baby in half, but the baby died, because his split-the-difference opinion makes absolutely no sense legally or factually.

It is obvious that Judge McAfee started his decision-making process by deciding the result he wanted: disqualifying special prosecutor Nathan Wade, but retaining Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis and her entire office. In order to reach that bizarre result, he had to rely on the testimony of Willis, which he knew was totally untruthful.

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CIA Blocked Feds from Interviewing Hunter Biden’s ‘Sugar Brother’ Kevin Morris During Five-Year Tax Probe

New York Post The CIA blocked federal investigators from interviewing Hunter Biden’s “sugar brother” Kevin Morris during a five-year probe into the first son’s alleged tax crimes, a whistleblower has told House impeachment leaders. House Oversight and Judiciary Committee chairmen say the whistleblower informed them the intelligence agency stopped IRS…

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Proposal would Halt Taxpayer Money to Medical Schools Promoting Racial Bias

Reps Greg Murphy, Brad Wenstrup, and Burgess Owens (composite image)

Educating from the podium and advocating for the inclusion of all, congressmen led by North Carolina’s Dr. Greg Murphy and Ohio’s Dr. Brad Wenstrup on Tuesday introduced legislation that would halt taxpayer money from going to medical schools promoting racial bias.

Multiple speakers, both Black and white and at least one saying she’s neither Republican nor Democrat, drove home the message directly and indirectly that health care is about the patients and their outcomes. Collectively, they explained how the best care comes from the best in education, that all can access it, and the promotion of “critical race theory-based woke philosophy based on DEI” will put Americans’ lives at risk.

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Energy Secretary Insists Energy Stockpiles Will Be Refilled in 2024, but Experts are Skeptical

Secretary Jennifer Granholm

Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm said Monday that the nation’s energy stockpiles, which President Joe Biden depleted to its lowest level since the 1980s, will be refilled by the end of 2024.

“By the end of this year we will essentially be back to where we would have been absent the sales,” Granholm said at the CERAWeek energy conference in Houston, Texas, according to AFP.

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Politicians of All Stripes Focus on Post-Election Audits Before 2024 General Election Even Happens

Poll workers counting ballots

Various state legislators are focusing on post-election audits ahead of the November 2024 general election, with Republicans looking to implement or improve audits in some states, while Democrats in one state are trying to prevent an audit of the presidential election.

Post-election audits have been on the books of some states for years, most famously, the “hanging chad recount” fought over in 2000 between George W. Bush and Al Gore, which was decided by the Supreme Court of the United States. The issue of post-election audits and the ensuing litigation has received renewed attention since the 2020 presidential election, after numerous irregularities were discovered. The Arizona Senate post-election audit was one of the more famous following the 2020 race. Dispositive evidence that irregularities “moved the needle” one way or another is still a point of contention.

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Biden Admin Finalizes Stringent Tailpipe Emissions Standards

Mechanic underneath car

The Biden administration unveiled its final tailpipe emissions standards for vehicles Wednesday, effectively requiring about 67 percent of all light-duty vehicles sold after model year 2032 to be electric vehicles (EVs) or hybrids.

The Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) finalized standards rolled back some of the de facto EV production benchmarks for manufacturers proposed initially, but still require automakers to reach the final standards set forth in the agency’s April 2023 proposal. The agency finalized the standards as the American EV market is struggling: demand has not grown as quickly as expected, manufacturers are losing billions on their EV product lines, executives have backed away from near-term production targets and Biden administration subsidy programs to facilitate the creation of a nationwide EV charging network have so far failed to make much of an impact.

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Virginia State Sen. Louise Lucas Acknowledges Youngkin Could Veto Budget, but Calls Potomac Yards Arena ‘Non-Starter’

Lucas Youngkin

Virginia State Senator L. Louise Lucas acknowledged in a Tuesday interview that Governor Glenn Youngkin could veto the budget proposed by lawmakers, but nonetheless insisted any compromise that would fund the creation of the Potomac Yards arena for the Washington Wizards and Capitals is a “non-starter.”

In her Tuesday interview with WTOP News, she acknowledged Youngkin’s remarks indicating “he may have to veto the budget,” calling it “his prerogative.” Still, she pledged, “at no point will I ever be in a position to say I am going to commit state tax dollars for an arena that’s going to benefit billionaires,” calling it “a non-starter for me.”

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Commentary: A Huge Double-Digit Decline in the Share of Black Voters Saying Biden’s Policies Have Helped Them Could Shake Up 2024 Election

President Joe Biden speaking to a crowd

After supporting Democrats for decades, Black Americans are poised to make a marked shift away from the left thanks to the Biden Administration’s dismal economic record and abandonment of the working-class.

A striking New York Times/Siena College poll from early March shows the share of Black Americans who say Biden’s policies have “helped them personally” has taken a forty-one-point nosedive since last November’s Times/Siena battleground state poll.

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Dual Polls Find Trump Leading Biden in Two Key Southern Battleground States

Donald Trump and Joe Biden in front of The White House (composite image)

Former President Donald Trump is leading President Joe Biden in the battleground states of Georgia and North Carolina for a head-to-head general election rematch, according to dual Wednesday polls.

Trump is favored 51 percent to 47 percent against Biden among registered voters in Georgia, as well as 51 percent to 48 percent in North Carolina, the Marist surveys found. Both polls also found Trump making inroads among independents, black voters and those aged 18-to-29 compared to 2020 exit polling.

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Commentary: The Gift of C-SPAN in an Era of Partisan Media

Al Gore on C-SPAN

Forty-five years ago today, future vice president Albert Gore Jr. stood in the well of the House of Representatives to discuss an innovative development in television programming. There was nothing remarkable about that in itself: Al Gore had been a newspaperman before becoming a Tennessee congressman and had a genuine interest in both new technology and mass communication.

Except that there was something momentous about Gore’s speech that day. It was the first time that remarks delivered on the House floor by a member of Congress were televised. It was an event long envisioned by a 38-year-old Indiana-born, Purdue-educated, U.S. Navy veteran who had worked as a White House and Capitol Hill aide before returning to journalism. His name was Brian Lamb. As the Washington bureau chief of the trade publication Cablevision, Lamb had dreamed of creating a nonprofit cable network that would focus exclusively on public affairs, particularly Congress. It was called C-SPAN, and on March 19, 1979, that dream became reality.

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Texas Schools Pull $8.5 Billion from BlackRock over ESG

Texas State Board of Education Chairman Aaron Kinsey

The Texas Permanent School Fund (PSF) is pulling $8.5 billion from the investment firm BlackRock over its use of environmental, social and governance (ESG) policies.

The board informed the investment firm that it was being terminated as the manager of the Navarro 1 Fund in a Tuesday letter, which it provided to the Daily Caller News Foundation. The divestment represents the largest from the private firm, according to Fox Business Network.

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Conservatives Hope Supreme Court’s Initial Ruling on Texas Immigration Law Inspires Other States

A preliminary Supreme Court ruling that allowed Texas to begin enforcing a state law empowering local police to arrest and deport illegal aliens if the federal government doesn’t should inspire other states to follow suit, prominent conservatives tell Just the News.

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Conservatives Push to Stop Biden’s Open Border Policies with Funding Bill Before Friday Deadline

Speaker Mike Johnson

House conservatives are pushing for House Speaker Mike Johnson to stop President Biden’s “open border” policies with the federal funding bill that Congress has to pass before a Friday deadline to avoid a partial government shutdown.

Congress has passed six appropriations bills in the form of a “minibus” spending package to fund certain cabinet agencies but both the House and Senate still have to pass another package to fund the remaining agencies.

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Centrist Third Party Dreams of Sending a ‘Unity Ticket’ to the White House amid One Problem

No Labels party advocates giving public address

Centrist organization No Labels is struggling to find candidates to head its third-party “Unity Ticket” in November after deciding in early March to move forward with such a bid, NBC News reported Tuesday.

The group’s 800 delegates voted to advance a presidential run on March 8 after months of consideration, and detailed its nominating process on Thursday. However, various prominent Republicans and Democrats continue to rule out running with No Labels ahead of its April convention in Dallas, Texas, according to NBC News.

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Commentary: It’s Time for GOP to Unite Behind Trump

Donald Trump Rally

For the first time in my 94 years on earth, I fear for the future of our democracy. I see the federal government using its enormous powers with contempt for the governed instead of with the consent of the governed as our founders envisioned.

Fundamental change in America is occurring by executive order or the force of the government’s police powers instead of through the legislative process required by the Constitution. From this, I fear that free market capitalism may be replaced by big government socialism. I also fear the erosion of our rights and freedoms, including parental rights, freedom of speech and religion, and due process. 

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Youngkin Reportedly Considers Veto for Skill Game Bill amid Potomac Yards Arena Feud

Youngkin Skill Games

A Monday report suggests Governor Glenn Youngkin could veto legislation legalizing skill games throughout the commonwealth as a casualty of his fight to build the Potomac Yards arena and bring the Washington Capitals and Washington Wizards to Virginia.

Noting the governor’s comments last week declaring Democrats’ vision for Virginia is “let’s tax everybody as high as we possibly can, let’s put a pot shop on every corner, and let’s put a slot machine in every 7/11,” the Washington Post reported the controversial skill games bill could be vetoed due to its association with State Senator L. Louise Lucas (D-Portsmouth).

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White House Pressure to Censor Social Media No Worse than Yelling at Journalists, SCOTUS Suggests

Federal officials privately scold reporters and attempt to shape or even stop their coverage on a regular basis, without getting sued for First Amendment violations.

How close is that to White House aides privately and repeatedly badgering their counterparts at social media companies and President Biden publicly accusing Facebook of “killing people,” for insufficient censorship of disfavored narratives on COVID-19?

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Bentley Pushes Back Ambitious All-Electric Goals

Driver getting into his Bently

British luxury carmaker Bentley Motors is pushing back its plans to have an all-electric vehicle (EV) offering by 2030, following other top vehicle manufacturers, according to CNBC.

Bentley had originally planned to transition all of its vehicle sales to EVs by 2030 but announced that it would be looking to delay that change by a couple of years, continuing to offer hybrids through that time, CEO Adrian Hallmark said in a media briefing following the company’s fourth quarter results, according to CNBC. General Motors, Ford, Mercedes-Benz and Honda have all backed off of previously made EV goals in the past year as low demand and high costs have stifled the commodity’s profitability compared to traditional vehicles.

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Olympian Caitlyn Jenner Supports Ban on Trans Athletes on Teams not Matching Biological Sex

Caitlyn Jenner

Olympic gold medalist Caitlyn Jenner expressed support for a New York county official’s order that bans women’s sports teams that include biological male athletes and men’s sports teams that include biological female athletes from using county-owned facilities.

Jenner, who came out as a transgender woman in 2015, focused on transgender women competing in women’s sports during an event Monday alongside Nassau County Executive Bruce Blakeman.

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Layoffs Continue Nationwide as Economic Concerns Rise

Fired by email

As the economy worsens, multiple industries continue to shed jobs.

U.S.-based companies laid off 82,307 employees in January, a 136 percent increase from the previous month, according to a report by the business and coaching firm, Challenger, Gray & Christmas, Inc. The Wall Street Journal reported companies are still cutting white-collar jobs in an attempt “to do more with less.”

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Music Spotlight: Amy Sheppard

When Amy Sheppard who is part of the wildly popular Australian band, Sheppard, decided to put out country music, I was intrigued. I wanted to find out more about this family and their musical roots.

Amy Sheppard is an Australian singer-songwriter. Along with her siblings George Sheppard and Emma Sheppard, she is a founding and current member of the indie pop band Sheppard. The group is 34X platinum, and their massive hit “Geronimo” has had more than 750 million streams.

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Commentary: Why the ‘Language Watch?’

"Gun Violence" Language Watch video

Who is in charge of the language? Not us conservatives, that’s for sure. We are flotsam flowing with the waters formulated by the liberal establishment and culture. We are using their language constructs. No longer.

We are creating a series of short videos, about one minute each, plucking a phrase from those polluted waters and explaining why it is polluted, propagandistic, and not worthy of use in a society that more than ever needs a common language not loaded with political narratives. We are calling the series “Language Watch.”

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Biden Border Policy Critics Lament ‘Migrant Crime Wave’

House Homeland Security Committee Chairman Mark E. Green blasted President Joe Biden for the wave of illegal immigrants entering the U.S., saying a “migrant crime wave” is sweeping the country.

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Firm Tied to China’s Military Industrial Complex Plans to Roll Out Massive Battery Chemical Plants in U.S.

Shenzhen Capchem Technology plant floor

The Chinese manufacturer of chemicals for electric vehicle batteries planning to build two U.S. factories has long-standing ties to China’s military industrial complex, a Daily Caller News Foundation investigation found.

Capchem Technology USA, the wholly-owned subsidiary of China-based Shenzhen Capchem Technology (Capchem), plans to build factories in both Ohio and Louisiana that would produce components for electric vehicle batteries. Chinese government documents reveal the Chinese chemical giant was selected over a decade ago to conduct aerospace research for China’s military industrial complex as part of a program overseen by a blacklisted Chinese government agency.

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Sanctuary Cities Ramp Up Migrant Evictions Ahead of 2024 Election

Democratic metropolises are evicting migrants in the lead-up to the 2024 election despite their status as sanctuary cities, citing resource strains resulting from the ongoing border crisis.

Chicago, Denver and New York City are all increasing shelter evictions as the cities are overwhelmed with migrant influxes. President Joe Biden has declined to take executive action to secure the border, passing the buck to Congress despite revoking former President Donald Trump’s executive orders on the matter early into his term.

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