Month: May 2024

CNN’s Elie Honig Says Stormy Daniels’ Responses Were ‘Disastrous’ for Alvin Bragg’s Case

Virginia Star Staff
Elie Honig

CNN legal analyst Elie Honig said porn star Stormy Daniels’ responses to attorneys for former President Donald Trump were “disastrous” for the prosecution’s case.

Daniels testified Tuesday about her alleged relationship with Trump, providing salacious and irrelevant details that prompted Trump’s attorneys to move for a mistrial, which New York Judge Juan Merchan rejected. Honig said that the cross-examination of Daniels by Trump’s attorneys “went poorly” for Democratic Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg.

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Commentary: If Republicans Want Better Legislative Outcomes, Trump Needs to Win Greater Majorities by Playing for the Popular Vote

Virginia Star Staff
Donald Trump at rally

Since 1960, Democrats have won the popular vote in 10 out of the last 16 presidential elections, and thanks to a combination of historical realignment (beginning during the 1930s), presidential coattails and the incumbency advantage, have also won U.S. House majorities in 11 out of those 16 contests, oftentimes with super majorities.

The modern story over U.S. House control, and therefore legislatively shaping the society of laws we live in presently, begins in 1932 when Franklin Roosevelt and Democrats utterly crushed Herbert Hoover’s reelection bid, winning 57.4 percent of the popular vote and 42 states to Hoover’s meager 39.6 percent and 6 states.

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TikTok Sues U.S. Government over New Law Banning App

Virginia Star Staff
TikTok User

On Tuesday, the Chinese social media app TikTok and its parent company filed a lawsuit against the federal government of the United States over a new law threatening to ban the app if it is not sold to another company by next year.

ABC News reports that the lawsuit, filed by TikTok and its Chinese parent company ByteDance, claims the new law is a violation of the First Amendment rights of TikTok’s users. The bill was signed into law by Joe Biden last month, with the TikTok ban being one provision of a larger $95 billion foreign aid package. The law requires ByteDance to sell TikTok within 9 months, or else the app will be banned from use in the United States.

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Alleged Threats Against LGBTQ ‘Pride’ Event in Montana Revealed to Be a Hoax

Virginia Star Staff
LGBTQ Flags

Several threats made against a pro-LGBTQ “pride” event in Montana have since been determined to be hoaxes simply meant to discourage people from attending.

According to ABC News, the Bozeman Police Department (BPD) investigated two threats that “occurred within the city limits of Bozeman” over the weekend, after two other threats had been made on Friday. The threats were eventually determined to have no credibility, and were simply “used to try to dissuade people from participating.”

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Report: Biden White House Trying to Force New Regulations to Hinder Second Trump Presidency

Virginia Star Staff
Joe Biden Donald Trump

A new report claims that the Biden Administration is attempting to implement federal regulations that will be difficult to reverse by a future president, as polls increasingly suggest that Joe Biden will lose the November election to former President Donald Trump.

According to the Daily Caller, the report says that President Trump plans to sign multiple resolutions under the 1996 Congressional Review Act if he wins a second term, aimed at reversing many of Biden’s regulations. In response, officials in the Biden White House are examining methods to make regulations more permanent or harder to undo.

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MIT Becomes First Elite School to Eliminate Diversity and Inclusion Hiring Requirement

Just the News
MIT President Sally Kornbluth

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology became the first elite university to get rid of its “Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion” criteria in its hiring requirements, after the university’s president claimed that it does not work.

MIT previously required candidates hoping to join its faculty to provide a statement that shows they understand the “challenges related to diversity, equity, and inclusion,” and describe their “track record of working with diverse groups of people.” They were also required to demonstrate how they plan to advance DEI in their position at the school. But a 2023 poll found that a large majority of the school’s faculty and students were afraid to express their views, according to Fox News.

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Alvin Bragg’s Team Produced Docs at Center of Case Against Trump But Fail to Establish Direct Link

Virginia Star Staff
Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg

Prosecutors finally displayed the documents at the heart of Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s case against former President Donald Trump on Monday, but have yet to establish a direct link to demonstrate Trump’s culpability.

Until Monday, prosecutors had been focused on setting up other pieces of their case: the context for the $130,000 payment made to porn star Stormy Daniels to keep her quiet about claims of a sexual encounter and the broader “conspiracy” to influence the 2016 election they allege Trump was involved in. Monday’s witnesses — former Trump Organization controller Jeffrey McConney and Trump Organization accounts payable supervisor Deborah Tarasoff — offered starkly different testimony than earlier witnesses like David Pecker and Keith Davidson, providing no salacious celebrity stories and an almost exclusive focus on accounting.

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Influential Liberal Donor Organizes Massive Coalition to Throw Cash Behind Voter Mobilization

Virginia Star Staff
Pierre Omidyar

An influential left-of-center donor’s charity launched an initiative compelling other philanthropies to pour money into voter mobilization efforts ahead of the 2024 elections.

Democracy Fund, which was founded and is funded by liberal philanthropist Pierre Omidyar, has rallied a group of 174 organizations and individuals pledging to expedite their disbursement of grants related to efforts including get-out-the-vote operations. The pledge calls on its signatories to either make the bulk of their election-related donations by the end of April, to “move up” disbursements scheduled for later in the year or to streamline their grant approval processes.

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Commentary: A Government Unrepresentative of the People

Virginia Star Staff
Joe Biden

We are in the midst of a presidential campaign year. It’s supposed to be the Super Bowl for political junkies like me. But it feels strange and muted, and, so far, its vibe is uncomfortably similar to 2020.

The 2020 election was strange because of COVID, which became a pretext to change the rules in order to rig the outcome. This time, there is no such excuse for a “basement campaign.” It’s true that Biden is old, feeble, and unpopular. And Trump has been sidelined, quite deliberately, by a malicious New York judge who won’t allow him to travel and conduct his signature rallies. The problem, however, now infects all electoral politics.

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Dominion Energy Dismisses Attempts by Groups to Halt Offshore Wind Construction

The Center Square
Wind mills offshore

Three public interest groups are claiming a legal victory of sorts, saying their actions have led to at least a temporary delay in Dominion Energy’s efforts to begin construction on Virginia’s major offshore wind project – but Dominion disagrees.

The Heartland Institute, the Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow and the National Legal and Policy Center have taken action against Dominion several times now regarding the project.

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Chairman Jordan Presses Wray for Data on FBI’s Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Hiring Practices

Just the News

“We understand that the FBI has struggled with attracting enough qualified applicants from all desired target groups to sustain its mission This is likely due to the FBI re-focusing its recruitment efforts on DEI statistics,” Jordan wrote in the letter to Wray.

House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, is pressing Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) Director Christopher Wray for more information surrounding the bureau’s Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) hiring practices and other initiatives.

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Commentary: Mammas, Don’t Let Your Babies Grow Up to Be Police Officers

Virginia Star Staff
Memorial service for a police officer

Four law enforcement officers were shot dead in Charlotte, North Carolina, last week. On hearing the news, I was reminded of my mother’s frequent warnings about police work. Her message? Steer clear. With her husband and her brother patrolling the mean streets of Newark, she didn’t need the added anxiety of having her sons do the same. Today, for the children and spouses of police officers, that anxiety must be unbearable — and not just because of the obvious danger.

You may not have heard of the Charlotte shooting. It vanished from the national news in a flash. Despite the magnitude of the offense, within two or three days the national media had dropped the story cold.

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Former Biden DOJ Official Prosecuting Trump Received Thousands of Dollars From DNC

Virginia Star Staff
Matthew Colangelo

The lead prosecutor for Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s case against former President Donald Trump received thousands of dollars from the Democratic National Committee (DNC) in 2018, Federal Election Commission (FEC) records show.

Matthew Colangelo, who was President Joe Biden’s acting associate attorney general and spent two years in the current president’s Department of Justice (DOJ), joined the Manhattan District Attorney’s office as senior counsel in December 2022. The lawyer received $12,000 from the DNC in 2018 for “political consulting” in two payments of $6,000 on Jan. 31 of that year, FEC records show.

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Biden Gives Fewest Interviews of Any President in 40 Years, Raising Questions Among Friendly Media

Just the News
Joe Biden Doing an Interview

The media is growing weary of President Biden’s avoidance of interviews with journalists, as he has given the fewest of any president in over 40 years.

Mainstream media is noticing that Biden is sitting down for fewer interviews than they are accustomed to presidents giving, which some have speculated is the result of old age and failing memory.

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House Republicans Seek Transparency on Number of Foreign Nationals in U.S. Illegally

The Center Square
Alejandro Mayorkas With Immigrants

A group of 17 Congressional Republicans led by U.S. Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas, is calling on Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas to provide information on “the total number of illegal aliens currently residing within the United States.”

In a letter to Mayorkas, whom they voted to impeach in February, the Republican lawmakers argue, “The American people deserve an exact accounting of the number of illegal aliens residing in the country, especially if the federal government’s policies have caused that number to surge since the previous estimate.”

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Anti-Israel Activists Behind Columbia University Protests Trained in Cuba for Years

ADN America

Some of the anti-Israel protests taking place at U.S. college campuses, including the recent demonstrations at Columbia University, have been supported by organizations that traveled to communist Cuba to receive resistance training, an ADN investigation has uncovered.

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‘May Be Problematic’: New Study Highlights Another Potential Roadblock for Biden’s Offshore Wind Push

Virginia Star Staff
Offshore wind farm

A new study has identified a potentially massive problem for offshore wind developments that could further hinder the Biden administration’s push for the technology.

The study, published in a scientific journal called Wind Energy Science and authored by researchers from the University of Colorado and the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), focuses on what happens when the presence of nearby wind turbines reduces wind speeds for other turbines and their ability to produce power. The researchers project that the “wake effect,” the technical name for the phenomenon, could lead to a loss of up to 38 percent of power generation at one East Coast offshore wind development.

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Hakeem Jeffries Boasts About Dems ‘Effectively’ Running House — Despite GOP Majority

Virginia Star Staff
Congressman Hakeem Jeffries

Democratic Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries of New York claimed that Democrats were “governing as a majority” in the House of Representatives even with nominal Republican control during an interview that aired Sunday.

Jeffries noted that Democrats provided over twice as many votes than Republicans in passing HR 8035, the Ukraine Security Supplemental Appropriations Act in April during the interview with Norah O’Donnell of CBS News that aired on “60 Minutes.” Jeffries boasted of Democratic successes in the GOP-controlled House during the interview, saying that Dems “get things done.”

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Democrats Outnumber Republicans as Commencement Speakers – Again

Virginia Star Staff
Auburn University commencement address

Democrats will again outnumber Republicans as commencement speakers this spring, according to an analysis from The College Fix.

The Fix found similar results last year, after reviewing public statements, news articles, and political donations to determine party affiliation. The Fix reviewed the main graduation speakers at the Southeastern Conference, the Ivy League, and the Big Ten.

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Commentary: Are Trump’s Polls Understating His Lead?

Virginia Star Staff
Donald Trump

During the two months since President Biden delivered his State of the Union address, a wide variety of legacy news outlets have been at pains to portray an infinitesimal improvement in his polling as a shift of momentum in the presidential race. Last week, for example, USA Today breathlessly reported that “Trump and Biden are ‘darn near even’ in the 2024 election.” If this was meant to provide moral sustenance for worried Democrats it was thin gruel indeed. Biden is an incumbent president struggling to keep up with a challenger most of whose time and money has been devoted to fighting off a ruthless lawfare campaign. Moreover, if history is any guide, it’s probable that the polls understate the strength of Trump’s support.

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Federal Government Working With Left-Wing Groups to Implement ‘Bidenbucks:’ Public Records Show

Just the News
Department of Justice building

The federal government is working with left-wing organizations to implement “Bidenbucks,” which is President Biden’s executive order to turn as many federal agencies as possible into get-out-the-vote (GOTV) centers across all states.

The Department of Justice worked with left-wing organizations to determine how to implement Biden’s executive order to use the federal government to register voters, which began after one of those groups aided the Biden administration with creating the executive order.

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Commentary: The End of Old Left-Wing Mythologies

Virginia Star Staff
Pro-Palestinian campus protest

The current radical and often violent protests on mostly blue-state, supposedly elite campuses have exposed in toxic fashion what the left has become. And yet, in a paradoxical fashion, the campus insanity has offered the nation some moral clarity.

What’s surprising is not that the demonstrators are violent and nihilist, but that they are, on the one hand, so openly and crudely anti-Semitic, racist, and anti-American, and yet on the other hand, so passive-aggressive, narcissistic, and weepy.

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Congress to Leverage ‘Power of the Purse,’ Taking Aim at Big Education Amid Ugly Campus Riots

Just the News
Claudia Tenney and James Comer (composite image)

The debate in Congress over federal funding of education dates to the days of Thomas Jefferson, but for the first time since Jimmy Carter created the U.S. Education Department a large number of lawmakers are now openly discussing cutting funding and changing the tax code to punish universities that have failed to quell anti-Israel riots and force a shift from the far-left ideologies that have taken root on most campuses.

“I think that the American people are pretty outraged about this, and they expect the Republicans in Congress to respond in kind with the power of the purse,” House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer told the “Just the News, No Noise” television show last week after visiting the protest-wracked George Washington University campus.

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Independents Have Little Trust, but Pick Trump Over Biden on Economy

The Center Square
Donald Trump

Newly released polling data spells bad news for President Joe Biden this election year.

Gallup released new polling data that showed independent voters trust former President Donald Trump more than Biden when it comes to the economy. About 34 percent of independents say they trust Biden to do the right thing for the economy, compared to 45 percent who trust Trump.

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Former Columnist Exposes Scientific American’s Sudden Descent Into Left-Wing Ideology

Virginia Star Staff
Michael Shermer

Scientific American, a top science magazine that has been around since 1845, has become increasingly captured by the political left to the detriment of its scientific goals, a whistleblower told City Journal in a story published Sunday.

While the magazine previously pushed for authors to debate accepted perspectives, it has recently moved toward far-left ideology on issues, such as race, gender and climate, Scientific American author Michael Shermer, who wrote for the outlet from 2001-2019, told City Journal. Shermer, who wrote a column called “Skeptic” for the publication says he faced pushback for writing pieces on progress in reducing discrimination as well as for criticizing the ideology of “intersectionality,” commonly referred to as “identity politics.”

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From Watergate to Now: John Solomon Exposes Deepening Collusion and Tampering in Trump Investigations

Admin

From his studios at Just the News, John Solomon joined Steve Bannon on WarRoom on Monday to examine previous impeachment proceedings and investigations concerning Donald Trump. He exposed some breaking news, reporting that there is extensive evidence of tampering and witness tampering in the Ukraine impeachment and subsequent investigations.

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Alex Soros Attends McCain Institute Sedona Forum to Stop Trump in 2024

Tom Pappert

Alex Soros, the son of Hungarian-American financier George Soros, confirmed in a Tuesday posts to social media that he attended the 2024 Sedona Forum held by the McCain Institute in Arizona and discussed former President Donald Trump with at least one high profile attendee.

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Judge Merchan Uses Trump’s Interview with John Fredericks to Declare Former President in Contempt of Court

Tom Pappert

Former President Donald Trump was held in contempt on Monday by New York Supreme Court Judge Juan Merchan over remarks the former president made on April 22 to radio and television host John Fredericks during an appearance on Outside the Beltway.

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Julie Kelly Commentary: The DOJ’s Doctored Crime Scene Photo of Mar-a-Lago Raid

Julie Kelly

A few weeks after the armed FBI raid of Mar-a-Lago in August 2022, the Department of Justice released a stunning photograph depicting alleged contraband seized from Donald Trump’s Palm Beach estate that day; the image showed colored sheets representing scary classification levels attached to files purportedly discovered in Trump’s private office.

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Biden Admin Unveils $3 Billion for Push to Replace All Lead Pipes in 10 Years

Virginia Star Staff
Lead Pipe

The Biden administration announced $3 billion in funding for its initiative to get rid of every lead pipe in the U.S. over the next ten years on Thursday.

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) unveiled the funding, which comes from the bipartisan infrastructure package of 2021 and is part of a larger $15 billion push to replace every lead pipe in the U.S. within a decade. President Joe Biden will tout his administration’s lead pipe removal spending at a Thursday event in North Carolina, according to the White House.

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Judge Blocks Suspensions of Middle School Female Athletes Who Refused to Compete Against Male Student

Virginia Star Staff
Track and Field

A West Virginia judge granted a preliminary injunction allowing several middle school girls to compete after the school district banned them from competition after refusing to play against a biological male, according to 12 WBOY, a local media outlet.

Five middle school female athletes forfeited their positions at a track meet in April after they were informed that they would have to compete against a biological male, prompting the school district to allegedly bar the girls from future competitions, according to WDTV News. The students sued, and Republican Attorney General Patrick Morrisey of West Virginia filed an amicus brief in support of the students.

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Report: University of Virginia Receives an ‘F’ for Antisemitism on Campus

The Center Square
University of Virginia

The Anti-Defamation League gives the University of Virginia an “F” in its Campus Antisemitism Report Card as the pro-Palestinian protesters mark another day of demonstrations on campus.

As anti-Zionism demonstrations continue to creep up on college campuses across the nation, the ADL has been active in keeping score of antisemitic incidents prior to the latest campus uprisings, with the goal to serve students and their families information on the “current state of antisemitism on campus” and how those institutions respond.

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Commentary: Typically, That General Is Removed

RealClearWire

by Stuart Scheller   Do general officers have an obligation to publicly tell the truth? I have an interesting perspective on this question. Currently, the Marine Corps teaches my story at the E-8 seminar (senior enlisted school). If you remember, I was the Marine officer who, via video, made a…

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Bidenomics Tips More Stressed U.S. Banks Into Danger Zone as Economy Slows

Just the News
Fulton Chairman and CEO Curt Myers

With inflation, high-interest rates and slowing economic growth already stressing Americans heading into the 2024 election, another reason to worry about the Biden economy has cropped up: distressed banks in danger of failing.

Last month U.S. regulators seized a bank known as Republic First Bancorp and agreed to sell it to Fulton Bank.

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