Virginia marches toward a greener future with its 2024 legislative session halfway through.
Clean energy enthusiasts in the House of Delegates and the Senate continue to build on the momentum gained by the passage of the Virginia Clean Economy Act, with legislation promoting the use of electric vehicles, energy efficiency, renewables, solar energy and greener buildings. Here’s a roundup of legislation that has been successful so far.
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On February 13, the U.S. House of Representatives overwhelmingly passed the Frederick Douglass Trafficking Victims Prevention and Protection Reauthorization Act with a vote of 414-11. The bipartisan legislation, authored by Rep. Chris Smith (R-NJ), will reauthorize the Trafficking Victims Protection Act of 2000 – which expired in 2021 – and provide approximately $1 billion in funding over five years for programs that combat the scourge of human trafficking.
Among the measures included in the comprehensive legislation are educational grants to provide situational awareness training and prevention for elementary and secondary students; funding reauthorization for the International Megan’s Law and Angel Watch programs; and authorization for programs that support survivors’ employment, housing, and education.
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Newly uncovered emails between Department of Homeland Security officials and journalists show the agency tasked with protecting U.S. border and domestic security admitted it is not tracking illegal immigrants after they were released from federal custody into the interior of the country.
In the emails obtained by the watchdog group Protect the Public’s Trust in a Freedom of Information Act request, one DHS official told a Washington Post reporter off the record he could not say how many immigrants are settling in Northern states via border state busing programs because the agency does not track those released from their custody.
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A prominent surgeon stated that the complications from vaginoplastic surgery that aims at removing male genitals and creating a vagina ‘can be pretty bad” and noted that there was “a growing number of programs throughout the world of gender affirmation, probably with a lack of training and not proper training,” according to the video of a presentation that the Daily Caller News Foundation obtained through a public records request.
“Complications can be pretty bad for vaginoplasty and the most-dreaded complication is to perforate the rectum while you are dissecting the vaginal cavity,” Dr. Alex Laungani, a Canadian surgeon, who has “expertise in trans surgical care,” said at an event sponsored by the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH).
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Democrats in the Virginia General Assembly narrowly passed legislation that will raise the commonwealth’s minimum wage to $15 per hour by 2026. Their votes came despite Governor Glenn Youngkin previously suggesting such legislation was unnecessary.
HB 1 previously passed the Virginia House of Delegates on February 2 in a partisan vote with 51 in favor and 49 against. In the Virginia Senate, the bill’s counterpart, SB 1, also passed along partisan lines, with 21 votes in favor and 19 votes against.
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As the threat of fake images and videos generated by artificial intelligence (AI) could potentially play a role in the coming 2024 elections and beyond, several tech companies have pledged to use their resources to combat misinformation as a result of such technology.
According to Politico, multiple companies are planning to cooperate through a so-called “Tech Accord” dictating several key goals and methods that will be used in the fight against false AI. The companies intend to expose and debunk any “deepfake” images or videos produced by AI, through various tactics such as watermarks and automatic detection technology.
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A Republican congressman has demanded an inquiry into the GOP chairman of the House Intelligence Committee for allegedly compromising national security after he made a public statement about highly classified information.
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Governor Glenn Youngkin’s proposal to ban TikTok from offering its services to minors in Virginia was defeated on Tuesday after Democrats in the Virginia House of Delegates opted against scheduling it for a vote.
The bill, HB 1468 by Delegate Jay Leftwich (R-Chesapeake), would have allowed Attorney General Jason Miyares to prohibit TikTok from knowingly allowing minors to use the social media platform in the commonwealth. ByteDance, the parent company of TikTok, would have been fined $7,500 per violation for every minor found to be using the site due to the company’s negligence.
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A bill to require public and charter schools in the state to socially “transition” children who request using a different name than their birth name is making its way through the Colorado legislature.
The bill, introduced in January, would require public schools and charter schools to use a child’s “preferred name” and label the refusal of a school to do so “discrimination.” It would also create a task force within the Colorado Department of Education to “provide recommendations” to schools on how to implement “non legal name changes” for children.
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Each U.S. military service saw a notable decline in white recruits over the past five years, according to data obtained by the Daily Caller News Foundation, likely factoring into the military’s crippling recruiting crisis.
The Army, Navy and Air Force missed their recruiting objectives by historically large margins in fiscal year 2023, which ended on Sept. 30, as the broader American public has grown wary of military service, according to Department of Defense (DOD) statistics, officials and experts who spoke to the DCNF. Since 2018, however, the number of recruits from minority groups has remained steady — or, in some cases, increased — while the number of white recruits has declined, according to data on the demographics of new recruits obtained by the DCNF.
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Virginia State Senator L. Louise Lucas (D-Portsmouth) used her position as Senate Finance Committee chair to block a Democrat effort to prevent public utility companies from donating to political campaigns in the commonwealth.
State Senator Danica Roem (D-Manassas) introduced SB 326, which aimed to ban candidates “from soliciting or accepting contributions from any public utility” and prohibit such companies from making political contributions.
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In 1986, an upstart public health researcher named Arline Geronimus challenged the conventional wisdom that condemned the alarming rise of inner-city teen pregnancies. While activist minister Jesse Jackson and health care leaders were decrying the crisis of “babies having babies” as a ghetto pathology, Geronimus contended that teenage pregnancy was a rational response to urban poverty where low-income black people have fewer healthy years before the onset of heart problems, diabetes, and other chronic conditions.
Although Geronimus’ claims gained little traction at the time, the concept she pioneered – “weathering” – eventually became a foundation for the social justice ideology that is now upending medicine and social policy. She has stated in interviews and in her writings that the term “weathering” was intended to evoke the idea of erosion and resilience.
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Key Virginia Democrats pulled their support from the proposal by Governor Glenn Youngkin to build a new sports complex in Alexandria, Virginia for the Washington Wizards and Capitals, and did not place a bill to advance the initiative on the Senate schedule on Monday.
State Senator Louise Lucas (D-Portsmouth) first indicated she would use her power as the Senate Finance Chair to block the bill in a Saturday post to X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, in which she slammed Youngkin for suggesting Democrats do not want “a strong America” in his speech at the 28th Mock Convention at Washington and Lee University.
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If the delusional but dead serious demands coming out of the international climate crisis community are to be believed, and as documented in the earlier two segments of this report, achieving universal energy security in the world will require wind energy capacity to increase by a factor of 60, while solar capacity increases by a factor of 100. The mix between wind and solar can vary, of course, but the required overall increase is indisputable. As noted in Part One of this report, that would be a very best-case scenario, where extraordinary improvements in energy efficiency meant that total energy production worldwide would only have to increase to 1,000 exajoules per year, from an estimated 600 exajoules in 2022.
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The IRS failed to revoke access to sensitive tax systems from contractors who failed background checks and doesn’t have protections for some of those systems to prevent unauthorized removal of taxpayer data, the agency’s chief watchdog warns in a stinging rebuke that comes on the heels of a devastating criminal leak of tax records.
“The fact remains that for some sensitive systems, the IRS does not have adequate controls to detect or prevent the unauthorized removal of data by users,” the Treasury Department Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA) concluded in a report this month.
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Under Biden, almost two-thirds of Americans are living paycheck to paycheck and now more Americans are working part-time for economic reasons.
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Ohio U.S. Senator JD Vance (R-OH) joined Monday’s edition of Steve Bannon’s War Room to discuss the supplemental funding package currently being debated in the Senate and how it could be used as a tool to impeach former President Donald Trump if he were to be elected in November.
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The U.S. Senate passed yet another bill to provide billions in aid to Ukraine and Israel, despite efforts by conservative and anti-interventionist Republicans to block the measure.
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Farms and families will pay significantly more under the Biden administration’s net-zero climate policies, a new report from an Ohio-based policy group says.
The Buckeye Institute’s Net-Zero Climate-Control Policies Will Fail the Farm shows farmers will see a 34% rise in operational costs under the policies and family grocery bills will increase 15% based on modeling.
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Washington, D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser on Sunday authored an opinion column offering reasons why Monumental Sports and Entertainment should abandon its plans to move to Alexandria, Virginia, where Governor Glenn Youngkin is working with the General Assembly to build a new entertainment complex for the Washington Wizards and Capitals.
Bowser revealed the offer made to keep the sports teams in the district, stressed the city’s ownership position over the Capital One Arena property and outlined a series of concerns about the possible move.
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The Texas legislature has allocated more than $11.6 billion to border security efforts over a four-year period, the most in state history.
It totals more than multiple state fiscal year budgets and more than what the Trump administration allocated to federal border security efforts in Texas.
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Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin was taken to the hospital again on Sunday afternoon, Pentagon press secretary Maj. Gen. Pat Ryder said in a statement, in a change after the secretary’s secret hospitalization in January triggered a firestorm of criticism.
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On Thursday, Texas Governor Greg Abbott (R-Texas) claimed that the state of Texas is on track to build more wall along the southern border than was constructed during President Donald Trump’s first term.
As the New York Post reports, Abbott made his remarks during a press conference in Shelby Park, the territory that Texas state authorities seized from the Border Patrol and other federal agencies following Abbott’s declaration of an invasion.
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Democratic-sponsored bills meant to inhibit censorship of books with sexually explicit content are advancing through the Virginia House of Delegates and the Senate this session — and not just along party lines.
House Bill 571, sponsored by Del. Karrie Delaney, D-Fairfax, passed the House Education Committee Wednesday 14-8, with two Republicans — Del. Carrie Coyner, R-Chesterfield, and Del. Baxter Ennis, R-Chesapeake — voting for the legislation.
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The South Carolina House Republicans plan to introduce a clean “Constitutional Carry” measure after declining to proceed with an amended version the state Senate passed, exposing a rift within Republican ranks over one of the party’s top priorities.
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A Virginia House of Delegates subcommittee tabled a bill Thursday that would have restricted data centers from being constructed within a half mile of state and national parks statewide.
Just before the committee voted on the bill, its patron, Del. Joshua Thomas, D-Prince William, made an impassioned plea in a last-ditch effort to move it forward — to no avail.
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Two Virginia bishops issued a letter through the Virginia Catholic Conference on Monday urging Catholics to oppose legislation in the Virginia General Assembly that would legalize physician assisted suicide within the commonwealth. The legislation passed a second committee vote on Thursday.
Bishop Michael Burbridge of Arlington and Bishop Barry Knestout of Richmond warned in their letter that bills “to legalize physician assisted suicide” are “moving rapidly” through the General Assembly. The bishops wrote, “We are alarmed and deeply saddened by this development. Human life is sacred and must never be abandoned or discarded.
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In 2021, Joe Biden opened wide an inherited, secure southern border that had finally stopped mass illegal immigration.
When he overturned Donald Trump’s efforts, a planned flood of over 8 million illegal immigrants entered the U.S.
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Nearly a year ago, the respected research collaborative Cochrane drastically reinterpreted its own “systematic review” of randomized controlled trials (RCTs) on masking in response to media pressure, deeming them “inconclusive” after the review team found that masks make “little to no difference” against COVID-19 or influenza.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is following Cochrane’s lead by publicly pressuring its advisers to revise their recommendations on masking in healthcare settings, which are based on its own systematic review that now undermines CDC preferences.
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Washington state is considering a set of legislative proposals to provide adult dancers with compensation protections and mandatory security, the Associated Press reported.
The set of proposals, dubbed the “strippers’ bill of rights,” is the product of years of advocacy from Strippers Are Workers (SAW), an organization operating in Washington state, according to the AP. The group “fights to empower the dancers of Washington state so that they can strip safely, positively and lucratively” in order to “keep stripping low barrier entry and accessible to a marginalized and stigmatized group of people who seek upward mobility,” according to its website.
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Democrats in the Virginia State Senate have beaten the attempt by Governor Glenn Youngkin and Virginia Republicans to cut the commonwealth’s income tax rates and reform Virginia’s sales tax until at least 2025.
SB 632, filed by State Senator Richard Stuart (R-Montross), was continued into 2025 on Tuesday in an overwhelming vote by the Senate Subcommittee on Finance and Appropriations, led by State Senator L. Louise Lucas (D-Portsmouth).
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The Department of Justice reportedly advised the Washington, D.C. Medical Examiner to discard the remains of aborted preemie-sized babies, according to an attorney with the Thomas More Society.
Those baby remains are from an abortion clinic in Foggy Bottom, a neighborhood of D.C. Pro-life activists believe the baby bodies are evidence that a D.C. abortionist was performing illegal abortions, but for two years now, D.C. authorities have stonewalled any questions about the babies’ deaths.
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America’s illegal immigration problem created by President Joe Biden’s administration embodies an ideology and achieves a very specific purpose — one that receives nearly no mention because to note it would reveal the game. Illegal immigration is a classic Marxist redistributionist plot. In this case, what’s being redistributed is America’s wealth to third-world nationals with no discernible skills and no intention of becoming “American.”
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, acting on behalf of the Biden administration, worked tightly with Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell to craft a terrible piece of legislation meant to jam not only House Republicans (McConnell’s favored enemy) but the people the House members represent.
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President Joe Biden’s State Department paid a public university to train a cohort of “master trainers” in India who will then go on to train more than two thousand people to become “LGBTQI+ allies,” according to a government spending database.
Washington State University received (WSU) $15,000 from the State Department in July 2023 to hold a three-day workshop aimed at training 30 individuals with the goal of them eventually training 2,500 people to become “LGBTQI+ allies” and to develop a “better understanding of diversity and inclusion,” according to a federal spending database. The trainings took place in India between Sept. 25 and Sept. 27, according to the university website.
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by Bethany Blankley One year in as Texas’ “border czar,” Mike Banks says the state has been so successful at blocking illegal entry that cartel activity has been pushed west into Democratic-led states that aren’t implementing similar tactics that Texas has. Banks spoke with The Center Square in an…
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Democrats in the Virginia General Assembly seek to allow local cities and towns to enact “anti rent gouging” ordinances that would regulate what property owners can charge renters and when rent can be raised, and additionally seek to add $100 million to the budget to fund “long-term direct rental assistance” for 5,000 families via vouchers.
Delegate Nadarius Clark (D-Suffolk) introduced HB 721 in early January to allow “any locality” to adopt an “anti-rent gouging” ordinance that would force landlords to provide two months of written notice in the event of a rent increase, prevent landlords from raising rent more than once within a 12-month period, cap how much rent can be increased and allow communities “to establish an anti-rent gouging board” to create regulations “by which landlords may apply for and be granted exemptions” from the legislation.
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Trust in banks has plummeted. From 2019-2022, the percentage of people who believe banks and financial institutions have a positive effect on the country fell among Republicans (from 63 to 38 percent) and Independents (by nine points). The problem grows every time a right-of-center group is debanked. Recognizing the problem, “rebuilding trust” is the theme of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. The path to rebuild trust in finance is simple—keep politics out of banking.
In spite of an alleged priority of building trust, the largest banks are aligning themselves with radical United Nations (UN) climate initiatives linked to radical efforts to reduce Africa’s population and destroy Sri Lankan agriculture.
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Many Republicans already are criticizing a border bill expected to be voted on in the U.S. Senate. Former President Donald Trump blasted the proposed legislation Monday, and House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., called it “dead on arrival.”
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The Senate border security bill offers a massive payout of potentially close to $50 billion to the U.S. defense industry in replenishing weapons stocks sent to Ukraine, Taiwan and Israel as security assistance.
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Republican Sen. James Lankford of Oklahoma took to X Sunday evening to defend a foreign aid and border security bill he negotiated with Democrats, but faced withering criticism on the social media site.
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As the world looks for ways to decarbonize energy while keeping energy costs down, nuclear power is getting a second look. But the costs and construction times to build nuclear reactors in the United States raises the risk America may get left behind.
Concerns about the impacts of climate change drove some nations, such as Germany, to pursue a transition from fossil fuels using primarily wind and solar. Researchers such as Mark Z. Jacobson produced studies that claimed the U.S. could achieve 100% of its energy needs from wind, solar and hydroelectric without any fossil fuels or nuclear.
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The Federal Aviation Administration under the Biden administration has pledged to continue diversifying its workforce under its Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Accessibility goals.
At the same time, a lawsuit that has long flown under the radar provides a glimpse into just how far the agency is willing to go to achieve those goals, even at the expense of skills-based tests for air traffic controllers.
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The Virginia House of Democrats successfully passed HB 1 and HB 2, which would see the minimum wage in the commonwealth raised to $15 per hour by 2026 and make the sale or transfer of “assault firearms and certain ammunition feeding devices” a misdemeanor criminal offense.
Filed by Delegate Jeion Ward (D-Hampton), HB 1 would see Virginia’s current minimum wage of $12 per hour increased to $13.50 per hour in 2025 before increasing to $15 per hour in 2026. It passed through committee with partisan votes, and narrowly passed in the House of Delegates with 51 votes in favor and 49 votes against.
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by Marshal Trigg President Biden, Vice President Harris, and their allies on the activist left insist that voter suppression is running rampant in the United States. In fact, the opposite is happening. DNC surrogates are fond of crying “voter suppression” wherever laws strengthen election security. Joe Biden infamously dubbed…
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The Senate on Sunday night released the text of its long-awaited border security bill.
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A bill to limit and expand law enforcement’s use of license plate readers passed out of a Virginia House subcommittee, sparking questions during a debate about the age-old dance between government overreach and public safety.
House Bill 775 from Del. Charniele Herring, D-Alexandria, would institute statewide regulations governing the use of the technology and enable law enforcement to use them on highways managed by the Virginia Department of Transportation.
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The National Institutes of Health (NIH) approved a research grant in November for over $200,000 to create an app that helps men who identify as transgender sound like women.
The grant, first reported by The College Fix, was approved in November 2023 by the NIH’s Deafness and Other Communication Disorders department and will be run by Vesna Dominika Novak, a transgender associate professor at the University of Cincinnati. The NIH approved $213,878 in funding from December 2023 to November 2024 so Novak’s team can create a smartphone app to train biological males who identify as transgender “women” to speak like women, according to the project details.
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In two letters to government officials, Virginia Congressman and Chair of House Freedom Caucus Bob Good, R-Lynchburg, demanded “accountability and transparency” from the Naming Commission.
The commission was established in 2021 to recommend renaming military assets showing honor to the Confederacy for the Department of Defense.
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Two bills put forward by Republicans in the Virginia House of Delegates were defeated in the a subcommittee by Democrats on Monday, just months after Governor Glenn Youngkin said promised to file bills targeting social media companies, particularly TikTok, to protect children in the commonwealth.
Defeated by a margin of two votes, HB 1161 would have required social media platforms to obtain a verifiable form of parental consent for minors to use the platform and for parental consent to be obtained a second time before social media companies could collect personal data from minors.
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According to the website Statista, the United States has the third largest standing “Army” in the world. The website says that we have 1.3 million soldiers under arms. By “soldiers,” they’re referring to all of our armed forces—Army, Marines, Navy, Air Force, and Space Force. Third largest in the world. Not bad, if you’re into measuring things. China and India are the only countries with larger militaries. Russia has one about the same size as us, as does North Korea.
In addition to our active force, Statista says we have over 760,000 reservists attached to our armed forces. For those unfamiliar, a reservist is also a soldier (generic term) who can theoretically be called into duty to do things the active forces do. They’re called reservists because they are the first line of replenishment for the active force. Reservists serve in various capacities in all of the branches of the US military. They train once a month with their unit and have a two-week annual training event where they go to an installation and ensure their skills are ready for wartime. Some call them weekend warriors. I call them heroes—many or most have other jobs and serve our great country because they want to serve. Of key importance is that all of these service members are federally authorized and work at the direction of the president.
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