Category: Culture

Commentary: Uncomfortable Facts About Why Fatal Police Shootings Aren’t Declining

RealClearWire
Police arresting suspects

When Dexter Reed died in a shootout with Chicago police on March 21, the incident was quickly grafted onto a narrative that began in 2014 after a policeman killed Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo. – namely, that the U.S. faces an epidemic of violence by unbridled cops who do not believe black lives matter. “Killing of Dexter Reed raises questions about Chicago police reform. ‘The message is, go in guns blazing,'” blared a headline in the Chicago Sun-Times.

Reed’s death joins a long list of police shootings that have received wide media coverage and political scrutiny – especially those involving African Americans. Over the years, many police departments embraced reforms, including the use of bodycams, to document incidents – an effort bolstered by a public eager to use smartphones to record the behavior of cops. In 2015, the Washington Post created a database logging every person shot dead by police in the U.S.

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Commentary: The Trans Reckoning Is Not Yet Here — But It’s Coming Soon

Virginia Star Staff
Group of trans organizers in the street

Over at Compact magazine on Tuesday, Nina Power wrote “The Trans Reckoning Is Here,” and, as evidence, she cited a report by a British pediatrician named Hilary Cass written for the National Health Service that upturned the faux-scientific basis on which that country has embarked on normalizing “gender-affirming care.”

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Scottish Gender Clinic Stops Prescribing Puberty Blockers for Minors

Virginia Star Staff
NHS Scotland

A Scottish gender clinic for minors announced Thursday that they would no longer be prescribing puberty blockers for patients under the age of 18.

The Sandyford Sexual Health Services to Paediatric Endocrinology, which is the only clinic in Scotland that prescribes puberty blockers for minors, said that it would not be accepting new 16 and 17-year-old patients for hormone therapy until they turn 18, according to the announcement. The clinic cited the National Health Service (NHS) of England’s decision in March to ban puberty blockers for minors and the publication of the Cass Review on April 10, which found “weak evidence” for giving puberty blockers to children.

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Commentary: The Teachers’ Unions Are More Political than Ever

Virginia Star Staff
Becky Pringle

In the past, teachers’ unions concentrated on fighting to keep all teachers employed—competent or otherwise—laying off teachers by seniority when necessary and soaking taxpayers every chance they could. While those activities are still part of their mission, they have, over time, increasingly delved into the political/social realm, promoting Black Lives Matter, Critical Race Theory, DEI, class warfare, gender-bending, etc. And their current level of engagement is staggering.

Americans for Fair Treatment, a national nonprofit organization that educates public employees about their rights in a unionized workplace, recently released a report detailing the National Education Association’s (NEA) financial filings from Sept. 1, 2022, through Aug. 31, 2023.

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Commentary: The Coup d’Etat Against Candidate Trump

Virginia Star Staff
Donald Trump

In 1967, I had the privilege of studying criminal law at Yale University. The teacher was a superpower in the field named Joe Goldstein.

After a short time, we got to a series of cases where a prosecutor had empaneled a grand jury and gotten an indictment against some poor soul — almost always poverty-stricken and often black — who had either no evidence against him (and he was almost always male). That poor soul usually was convicted. He went to prison and that was that.

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Soros PAC Bets Big on White Women to Deliver 2024 Victory for Democrats

Virginia Star Staff
Joe Biden with supporter

A PAC funded by George Soros is bankrolling a political committee that is trying to convince moderate white women to vote for Democrats.

Democracy PAC donated $1 million to the One For All Committee, which produces and runs advertisements aimed at persuading “moderate white women” to vote for Democrats in “key battleground states,” according to a campaign finance disclosure. One For All has, in its past campaigns, supported President Joe Biden, Democratic Senate candidates and Janet Protasiewicz, a Democrat-endorsed Wisconsin Supreme Court candidate.

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Federal Appeals Court Overturns West Virginia Transgender Sports Ban

Just the News
Becky Pepper-Jackson

In a 2-1 ruling, the court ruled that the law violated Title IX, which prohibits gender discrimination in schools.

A federal appeals court on Tuesday overturned a West Virginia law that banned transgender girls from playing on girls’ sports teams.

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Left-Wing Outlet Hurtles Toward Bankruptcy Following Megadonor’s Retreat: Report

Virginia Star Staff
Pierre Omidyar

The Intercept is losing money amid left-wing megadonor Pierre Omidyar’s choice to stop providing funds to the outlet, Semafor reported on Sunday.

The Intercept is hemorrhaging around $300,000 monthly and is on pace to possess less than 1 million dollars in reserves by November, according to internal data distributed inside the outlet in March, Semafor reported. The outlet could potentially deplete its cash reserves entirely by May 2025 after Omidyar’s First Look Media decided to terminate its funding in late 2022.

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Virginia Hospital PSA Asks Patients to Behave Appropriately Amid Rising Violence for Healthcare Workers

Tom Pappert
Virginia Nurse PSA

A new public service announcement by the Virginia Hospital and Healthcare Association (VHHA) asks patients to behave appropriately while receiving treatment or otherwise in healthcare settings. It was released amid rising workplace violence for health workers in hospitals.

The VHHA press release explains the “Help Us, Help You” campaign “draws attention to the heightened risk of workplace violence faced by health care professionals.”

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New ‘Athenai Institute’ Pushes Universities to Divest from China

Virginia Star Staff
Caleb Max

An advocacy group is recruiting students from both major political parties to push for university divestment from Chinese government-controlled entities.

Athenai Institute co-founder Caleb Max told The College Fix the organization is working to build on the victories it has achieved since he and two other George Mason University students founded it in 2020.

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Newt Gingrich Commentary: The American People vs. Judicial Corruption

Admin

As Americans pay their taxes today, an historic event will begin in New York City. In a moment worthy of “On the Waterfront,” the great movie about corruption and brutality in New York, the New York system will attempt to judicially destroy the chosen champion of more than 80 million Americans.

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Commentary: North Carolina Could Be Ground Zero for the Gen Z Revolt Against Democrats

Virginia Star Staff
Gen Z Trump Voter

What began as imprecise theories among a handful of forward-looking political observers and youth organizers is materializing this election year, and poll after poll is now showing young voters deserting Democrats in droves.

Mainstream news outlets have little choice but to acknowledge the vast, double-digit declines in support for Biden among younger voters, a group which supported him by 25 percentage points in 2020. Now we are seeing tentative coverage of the youth shift and warnings to Democrats in Vox, NPR, CNN and other mainstream outlets.

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Saving Whales Started as Left-Wing Cause, but Now Conservatives are Taking Up the Fight

Just the News
Whale breaching the surface

Saving the whales was once a leading cause of left-wing environmental groups like Greenpeace. But offshore wind development has created an ironic twist in which conservative groups are now the loudest voices raising concerns about the North Atlantic right whale’s extinction.

The Heartland Institute, Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow (CFACT) and the National Legal and Policy Center, want to draw attention to what they say is a connection between an increase in dead whales along the East Coast and industrialization of the U.S. Coast. A new study by an independent acoustician concludes that they may be right.

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Commentary: Faith’s Proven Role in Overcoming Mental Illness

Virginia Star Staff
Therapy Session

by Carrie Sheffield   “There is an important body of conservative thought that is now nearly or completely absent on the faculties of many eminent universities,” former Harvard University President Derek Bok wrote in Harvard Magazine following Hamas’ terrorist attacks Oct. 7 in Israel and the ensuing campus chaos. He recommends “some immediate progress by trying…

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Commentary: Female Liberation Can Be Found in Marriage

Virginia Star Staff
Marriage

What does a fulfilling, self-focused life look like, according to liberated feminism?

Spa nights alone in a fancy apartment, perhaps. A boss babe CEO who enjoys hooking up on the weekends. Plastic surgery and perhaps a cute pet to post on Instagram.

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Commentary: DEI Cronyism and Woke Grifters

Virginia Star Staff
Fani Willis

When ideology replaces meritocracy or provides immunity from the consequences of illegal behavior, systemic mediocrity follows.

Under toxic National Socialism, Stalinism, and Maoism, millions of cronies and grifters mouthed party lines in hopes that their approved ideology would allow them to advance their careers and excuse their lawbreaking.

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Majority of Colleges Tie Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion to Graduation Requirements: Report

Virginia Star Staff
Graduation Ceremony

A majority of colleges and universities require students to take courses related to diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) in order to graduate, according to a new report.

Speech First, a pro-free expression organization, examined the policies of 248 colleges across the country and found that 67 percent of them required DEI coursework to “satisfy general education requirements.” Students enrolled in these courses are “subjected to courses advocating far-left ideological perspectives and pushing far-left political advocacy,” the report notes.

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Commentary: Clinton Allies Attack ‘Good Guy with a Gun’

Virginia Star Staff
Good guy with a gun

A left-wing group led by Hillary Clinton’s 2016 Campaign Chairman claims a “good guy with a gun” is a bad thing. Tell that to the good guy with a gun in Fort Worth who saved his own life, and maybe his children’s lives as well, from shooter JaDerek Gray, who opened fire on him in a road rage incident on I-35 West.

Gray was driving his motorcycle between lanes, which is illegal in Texas. The hero, driving an SUV next to Gray, couldn’t see him and tried to change lanes. Gray, furious, passed the SUV and parked his motorcycle in the middle of the highway, stopping traffic, witnesses said. Gray then pulled a gun and pointed it at the hero, who was in his vehicle with his children.

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National Collegiate Athletics Organization Rules Male Athletes Can’t Compete in Women’s Sports

Virginia Star Staff
NAIA President and CEO Jim Carr

The National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics (NAIA) announced Monday that only biological females would be allowed to play in women’s sports.

The organization’s Council of Presidents voted to approve a policy allowing “only students whose biological sex is female” in its women’s sports competitions, according to The Washington Post. The policy will go into effect on Aug. 1 in time for the 2024-2025 season.

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Commentary: Is ‘The Great Illusion’ in Ruins?

Virginia Star Staff
President Joe Biden

In 2021, Joe Biden was elected after a bitterly fought campaign that deposed the incumbent Donald Trump. Democrats eventually captured, for a time, both the House and Senate, ensuring the most left-wing government in modern American history.

Americans were then set to witness a great experiment. For the first time in their lives, a truly radical socialist program would supposedly fundamentally transform the way America dealt with the border, immigration, the economy, race relations, foreign policy, energy, law enforcement, crime, education, and social questions such as religion, gender, abortion, and schooling.

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Tuberculosis, Measles Break Out in Chicago Migrant Shelters

Virginia Star Staff
Measles vaccination at migrant shelter

In the city of Chicago, officials announced that there has been an outbreak of tuberculosis (TB) in several shelters currently housing illegal aliens.

As Fox News reports, the Chicago Department of Public Health (CDPH) released a statement confirming that TB had broken out in “a few different shelters” throughout the city. Although the statement did not disclose the total number of cases, officials nevertheless tried to downplay the threat by describing it as a “small number” of cases.

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Prominent Epidemiologist Says Data Proves COVID Lockdowns Failed, and Hurt Population

Just the News
Dr. Harvey Risch

Dr. Harvey Risch, Professor of Epidemiology at the Yale School of Public Health, says lockdowns failed to mitigate the COVID-19 pandemic and had “serious repercussions for substantial fractions of the population.”

“The measures that need to be monitored for a pandemic of this sort are the number of deaths, serious hospitalizations, and serious outcomes of the infection, not the infection itself,” Risch said on a “Just the News, No Noise” special on Friday.

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Commentary: Navigating the Vibe Shift of a Cultural Reckoning

Virginia Star Staff
Masked woman holding American flag

We have been hearing a lot about a “vibe shift” in American culture recently. The phrase has been around for a while. It gained new currency after the commentator Santiago Pliego wrote an essay about the phenomenon, and Tucker Carlson had him on his show to talk about it.

I recommend both.  For one thing, they offer notes of cheerfulness (I almost said “optimism,” but optimism is Dr. Pangloss’s failing) in the midst of our sea of gloominess and despondency. According to Pliego, Americans are awakening from their “dogmatic slumbers,” where the dogmas in question are the rancid pieties of the so-called “progressive” establishment. Have you checked your privilege today, Comrade? How are your pronouns holding up? What have you done to combat “whiteness,” “toxic masculinity,” and “climate change?”

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Movie Would Share ‘Gut-Wrenching Story’ of Man Who Tried to Become a Trans Woman

Virginia Star Staff
Walter Heyer

Cross-dressed by his grandmother as a child, abused by his uncle, confused and hurting, Walt Heyer sought to become a woman. As a young man, he underwent attempted gender-reassignment surgery, lived as a trans-identifying woman for eight years, and ultimately detransitioned.

Heyer, now 83, has spent the past few decades offering support to men and women who also have been taught to believe they were born in the wrong body. As part of that effort, he told The Daily Signal, he’s written a number of books and answered “thousands” of letters from individuals, often men, who seek his help.

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Trans High School Basketball Player Who Knocked Down Female Rival Competes Against Girls in Multiple Sports

Virginia Star Staff
Lazuli Clark

The trans-identified girl’s basketball player who was filmed knocking down a rival player in Massachusetts earlier this year, was allegedly kicked off a rowing team a couple of years ago for leering at, and commenting on a girl’s bare breasts in the locker room.

In addition to basketball and rowing, the 6-foot tall KIPP Academy senior has competed against girls in multiple other high school sports, including volleyball, hurdles, shot put and tae kwon do, predictably shattering records and leading his teams to victory, according to the Australian online magazine Quillette.

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Red States Report More COVID-19 Vaccine Side Effects, Study Finds

The Center Square
Vaccine Shot

People living in states with more Republican voters were more likely to report COVID-19 vaccine side effects than those in states that lean blue.

That’s according to a new study that looked at 620,456 COVID-19 vaccine adverse event reports from adults reported to the federal Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System. The study was published in JAMA.

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Total Solar Eclipse on April 8: What It Is and Where People Can See It From

ADN America
Total Solar Eclipse

If you missed the annular solar eclipse that created a “ring of fire” over America last October, don’t worry, because this April 8 an incredible total solar eclipse will be crossing the skies.

North American observers will enjoy the incredible phenomenon that will pass through Mexico, the United States and Canada.

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Commentary: The Case for Marrying Young — From Someone Who Did

Virginia Star Staff
Marriage Rings

“Young people are the future” is a quip every Gen Zer has heard. Unfortunately, the “future” has lost its interest in the future. Young people are increasingly turning their backs on marriage and children, a choice that is hurting their mental and spiritual health, their physical wellbeing, and, ultimately, their happiness and sense of fulfillment with life.

As I approach graduation from college, I also approach my second wedding anniversary. Unfortunately, my husband’s and my young marriage is far from the norm in today’s society, and these new norms are hurting America’s young people.

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Commentary: The Unattainable American Dream

RealClearWire
American flag waving in front of house

Get married, have children, buy a house, and live comfortably on a single income. Not very long ago, that path was the reality, the norm, for the great American middle class.

But America has gone backward in this regard, and struggling citizens know it all too well. Experiencing the kinds of lives enjoyed by our parents and grandparents has become impossible for most Americans, leading to widespread disenchantment and a palpable loss of patriotism and confidence in America.

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Commentary: National Council of Teachers of English Hosts Seminar on How to Teach ‘Gender Queer’

Virginia Star Staff
Maia Kobabe

The National Council of Teachers of English, a professional development organization, hosted remote training to instruct K-12 teachers on how to teach the controversial book “Gender Queer” in their “classrooms, libraries, and communities.”

The NCTE, which boasts 25,000 members around the United States, hosted a panel including “Gender Queer” author Maia Kobabe and an “LGBTQIA+ Advisory Committee” to discuss how to incorporate the pornographic book into school curriculum.

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White House Blames ‘Misinformation’ for Transgender Day of Visibility Outrage

Just the News
Karine Jean-Pierre

“It is actually unsurprising that politicians are seeking to divide and weaken our country with cruel, hateful, and dishonest rhetoric,” the White House press secretary said.

The White House is blaming “misinformation” for the outrage that ensued after it observed Transgender Day of Visibility, which fell on the same day as Easter this year.

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Commentary: Biden’s Big Bet on Military Abortions Falls Flat

Virginia Star Staff
Lloyd Austin

Since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in June 2022, President Joe Biden has made it a top priority to use any and all administrative actions to promote and pay for abortions with taxpayer money.

No single related action garnered more attention than Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin’s announcement that the Defense Department would use taxpayer funds to pay for abortion travel. Now, a new Pentagon report finds that the Biden administration’s abortion travel policy for service members and dependents was used only 12 times from June through December.

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Commentary: Supreme Court Takes on California’s Uber-Disclosure Laws Aiming to Crack Down on ‘Dark Money’ Ads

Virginia Star Staff
San Francisco City Hall

When you watch a political ad, often you’ll see a disclaimer of who the ad was paid for by, usually a political action committee, but what about the donors to the committee? Or the donor’s donors?

That’s the bridge that a San Francisco campaign finance law seeks to cross — now being challenged at the U.S. Supreme Court in No on E v. Chiu — and to prohibit an incredibly common practice in campaign finance, which are donations from anonymous sources.

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Commentary: Big Tech Wants to Sneak Its AI Agenda Through State Legislatures

Virginia Star Staff
Connecticut State Sen. James Moroney with Texas State Rep. Giovanni Capriglione

Most conservatives are aware Big Tech is an insidious force in American life. Tech giants censor free speech, promote wokeness, and fund far-left groups. A number of Republicans at the federal level want to curtail the massive power Big Tech wields in our country.

However, at the state level, many Republicans are lining up to serve the interests of the tech giants. Big Tech knows that there’s little appetite at the federal level to do its bidding. So corporations like Microsoft are now lobbying state legislators to enact the AI regulations they want. It’s a campaign few Americans know about, but it could dramatically impact their lives.

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Analysis: Data Shows Most Migrant Flights Landing in Gov. DeSantis’ Sunshine State

Admin

President Joe Biden’s Department of Homeland Security (DHS) refuses to publicly identify the dozens of U.S. international airports for which it has approved direct flights from abroad for certain inadmissible aliens. At least 386,000 migrants through February have been allowed to fly to interior U.S. airports as part of a legally dubious admissions program the administration launched in October 2022. The rationale for the program is to “reduce the number of individuals crossing unlawfully” over the southern border — by flying them over it directly into the interior and then releasing them on parole.

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Commentary: Society’s Dangerous Embrace of Stupidity

Virginia Star Staff
Tattooed man in a flowered shower cap

Stupidity is what our schools are about. They do not teach young people about the glory of Melville, if they teach Melville at all, but about how Melville does or does not fit into some gridwork of identity politics, so that the work of art and intelligence itself, Moby-Dick, is left on the shore like a beached whale, dead and stinking, while onlookers in their stupidity hold their noses and pass by.

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Professor: Sex Too Intertwined with ‘Colonial’ Views about ‘Nature’

Virginia Star Staff
Dr. Kim Tallbear

Upcoming Princeton University lecturer Dr. Kim Tallbear lists running a “sexy performance laboratory” among her credentials.

Tallbear (pictured above), a professor at the University of Alberta in Canada, is scheduled to give the talk “Why is sex a ‘thing’? Making relations against a Colonial world” on April 1 for Princeton’s annual Meredith Miller Memorial Lecture.

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Most Believe in Jesus Christ’s Resurrection, New Poll Finds

Virginia Star Staff
Jesus Christ

Nearly 70% of registered voters believe that Jesus Christ physically rose from the dead, and more than 70% plan to celebrate Easter this year, a new poll finds.

A Scott Rasmussen National Survey poll, conducted March 20 and 21 among 1,000 registered voters, found that 73% of respondents will celebrate Easter this year. When asked whether they would celebrate the holiday primarily as a religious holiday or as a secular holiday, 56% of participants responded with religious, 16% said secular, and 27% said both secular and religious equally.

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Commentary: Easter Is the Greatest Holiday of All Time

Virginia Star Staff
Jesus Christ

Among world religions, only Christianity has a founder who professed to be the Messiah—the Son of God—who gave his life to save mankind.

The Easter weekend starts with Good Friday, the day God’s son Jesus was crucified to fulfill His plan to provide salvation from sin for those who believe in Christ. Easter Sunday is the celebration of Christ’s resurrection, the third day from his crucifixion death, and the completion of God’s plan for all to know who Jesus was.

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Commentary: The Myth of the Pagan Origins of Easter

Virginia Star Staff
Jesus Christ

You may not get any chocolate bunnies this Easter, but you’re bound to stumble across an article or meme suggesting that the story of Jesus Christ’s resurrection from the dead is just a reincarnation of some pagan myth. Whether it’s Ishtar, Osiris, or Attis, these claims are tantalizing but devoid of scholarly content–much like the sugar rush of the chocolate bunny, with its deficit of actual nourishment.

Claims like these are at least as old as James Frazer’s The Golden Bough, published in 1890. However, they circulate routinely in new packaging. Unfortunately, the public tends to remain ignorant of the results of alternative scholarship. Sensationalism (like sex) sells. So does controversy. And when the sensation or the controversy revolves around beliefs that millions believe in whole-heartedly, sorting fact from fiction becomes increasingly difficult.

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Biden Declares 2024 Easter Sunday Date as ‘Transgender Day of Visibility’

Just the News
Trans March

President Joe Biden declared March 31 “Transgender Day of Visibility,” the same 2024 date for Easter Sunday. 

“NOW, THEREFORE, I, JOSEPH R. BIDEN JR., President of the United States of America, by virtue of the authority vested in me by the Constitution and the laws of the United States, do hereby proclaim March 31, 2024, as Transgender Day of Visibility,” the White House wrote in a Friday press release. 

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Commentary: The Resurrection of Jesus Is the Most Important Event in History

Virginia Star Staff
Jesus Christ

Christians around the world will commemorate the most important event in our faith’s history this Sunday, but the Resurrection of Jesus isn’t just important to those who believe a Nazarene who walked the earth 2,000 years ago is the Son of God. The secular world’s history also turns on this pivotal event, which inspired so much progress that we take for granted today.

Christianity turned the values of the Pagan Roman world upside-down. The Romans considered the early Christians subversives—many called them “atheists” because they didn’t worship any pagan gods—and put them to death for refusing to worship the emperor. After some emperors adopted the faith, Emperor Julian attempted to revive paganism, but lamented that the Christian ethic had transformed the empire.

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Border Crisis Completely Upends Census Bureau’s Population Stats, Report Says

Virginia Star Staff
Illegal Immigrants

Immigration into the U.S. has risen so rapidly that it beat out federal projections by decades, according to a report from the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) released on Thursday.

The total number of immigrants in the U.S. rose to a record high of 51.4 million as of February 2024, representing 15.5 percent of the total population,according to CIS. The U.S. Census Bureau published projections in November which estimated that the share of foreign-born nationals in the U.S. would not reach 15.5 percent until at least 2039, making the projections “obsolete,” CIS authors Steven Camarota and Karen Zeigler wrote.

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Commentary: Voters Be Beware That Google Interferes in U.S. Elections

Virginia Star Staff
Person searching Google on their laptop

A brand new investigation has found that Google interfered in American elections at least 41 times over the last 16 years.

Published on March 18, the Media Research Center Special Report traced election interference efforts by the world’s most popular search engine all the way back to the 2008 election of former President Barack Obama.

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Idaho Gov Signs Bill Prohibiting Taxpayer Funding for Sex-Change Surgeries

Virginia Star Staff
Gov. Brad Little in front of Idaho State Capitol building (composite image)

Republican Gov. Brad Little of Idaho signed a bill Wednesday banning the state from using public funding to cover sex-change procedures.

House Bill 668 was introduced in February by Republican Reps. Julianne Young and Bruce Skaug and bars the state from using Medicaid funds to pay for sex-change surgeries or cross-sex hormones, according to the text. The legislation passed the state House of Representatives 58 to 11 and the state Senate 26 to 8, with one abstaining, in March before Little signed the legislation into law, the state legislature website shows.

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