President Joe Biden’s signature $5 billion program to convert the nation’s school buses to an electric fleet has collided with a formidable challenge: a lack of charging infrastructure and power generation from local utilities.
The Environmental Protection Agency’s internal watchdog issued a report just before the New Year’s holiday that offered the latest evidence of a cart-before-horse dynamic in the Democratic push for green energy.
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The best New Year’s resolutions are difficult but achievable, new research from the University of Oregon suggests.
Setting tough and specific goals can help one reduce attention lapses and perform better during tasks, researchers from the school found in a recent study published in the journal Attention, Perception & Psychophysics.
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On Wednesday, the city of Seattle finally reclaimed the last portions of a downtown area that had first been claimed by far-left protesters in an infamous effort to create an “autonomous zone.”
Fox News reports that the city’s Parks and Recreation Department and police department destroyed a so-called “community garden” that had been planted in Cal Anderson Park back in 2020, at the height of the nationwide race riots carried out by anarcho-communist and black nationalist agitators. The city declared that the destruction of the garden was due to concerns for public health and safety, as the site continued to draw undesirable people to the park, including homeless people and drug addicts.
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Four high school female track athletes in Connecticut have stood against the influx of transgender athletes seeking to compete against girls in school sports, likely setting up a defining legal battle of 2024.
The U.S. Court of Appeals rescued the legal challenge, Soule v. Connecticut Association of Schools, in December after a lower court dismissed the case. Now, the case will be heard in federal district court and will be a defining moment in the ongoing debate, which has been ramped up by a string of injuries to female athletes at the hands of transgender athletes in recent months.
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Governor Glenn Youngkin announced on Friday the distribution of more than $18 million in federal grants to 16 Virginia communities to improve existing housing and improve infrastructure. Youngkin claimed his distribution will help Virginians manage the increasing cost of living.
In a press release, the governor’s office said the distribution of Community Development Block Grants (CDBGs) “will support projects that rehabilitate housing, revitalize downtown districts, improve water and sewer infrastructure and provide dental facilities for needed services, benefiting more than 2,800 low- and moderate-income Virginians.”
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A new report shows that the Biden Administration handed out over 65 million condoms to countries around the world as part of alleged “climate change solutions,” directly implying that population control through “family planning” is a necessary response to fears of so-called “global warming.”
According to the Daily Caller, the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) in the fiscal year 2022 distributed approximately 65.5 million condoms, 9.8 million injectable birth control products, and 334,000 IUDs to foreign countries around the world. An internal agency report documenting the distribution efforts even admits that the intention is to “mitigate the impact of population dynamics on natural resources and state stability.” A separate document in 2023 claimed that “climate vulnerability, population growth and unmet need for family planning often occur together.”
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New York City’s effort in the 1990s to regulate toilets and shower heads to cut down water usage ignited consumer outrage, even inspiring a 1996 Seinfeld television episode in which the character Kramer was so fed up with his apartment’s low-flow shower head that he purchased a high-flow head on the black market.
Three decades later, the Biden administration is leaving few appliances in the home untouched in its quest to regulate the amount of water and energy Americans use for their household chores.
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Beginning January 1, illegal immigrants will be able to qualify for and use Medi-Cal, California’s taxpayer-funded free and low-cost healthcare plan for low-income residents. Experts warn that the state is already facing a healthcare shortage as a new $25 healthcare minimum wage threatens to reduce staffing levels — and doctors who accept Medi-Cal’s low reimbursement rate — even further.
By expanding Medi-Cal eligibility to illegal immigrants between the ages of 26 and 49 under SB 184, an omnibus spending bill, California will add an estimated 700,000 users to the Medi-Cal system at a cost of $2.7 billion per year.
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The new year signals change, specifically new laws which will take effect in Virginia, especially in the health care sector.
The Commonwealth will see a slew of new laws aimed at improving health insurance coverage, recognizing specific out-of-state counseling licenses, streamlining home studies for adoption and changes to the state’s medical marijuana oversite.
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With hundreds of thousands of veterans’ healthcare claims on backlog at the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), top Republicans in the House and Senate are hoping to prevent VA resources from being used to process claims for medical care of illegal immigrants.
According to a July report from the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), the agency contracts with the VA to process medical claims reimbursements involving illegal immigrants even though they did not serve in the U.S. military. Medical professionals treat illegal immigrants detained by ICE on site, but when specialized or emergency care is required, they are transported to private providers, according to Fox News. The arrangement between ICE and the VA was outlined in a 2020 memo during the Trump administration, Fox News reported.
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Virginia Delegate Sam Rasoul (D-Roanoke), who was tapped by House Speaker-designee Don Scott Jr. (D-Portsmouth) to serve as the Chair of the House Education Committee, predicted Democrats will find some “accord” with Governor Glenn Youngkin (R) in a Thursday interview. Still, Rasoul said he wants more funding for Virginia’s students, particularly those learning English as a second language.
Rasoul said he expects “common accord” with Youngkin on “mental health and some student mental health work” in remarks made to the Richmond Times-Dispatch, calling them “[p]laces where we can work together.”
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At a press conference on immigration reform earlier this month, Sen. Steve Daines, R-Mont., criticized President Biden for putting the needs of illegal immigrants over those of America’s veterans. “Veterans have a hard enough time getting the care that they need and now they have to compete with illegal immigrants? This will not fix the border crisis. Biden’s border crisis puts illegal immigrants first, it puts our veterans last,” Daines said.
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The Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority (WMATA) is facing a looming budget shortfall, and Virginia Sens. Tim Kaine and Mark Warner and Maryland Sens. Ben Cardin and Chris Van Hollen are hoping to ease operational costs related to national security and counterterrorism efforts.
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The Air Force Academy’s top official worried the Supreme Court’s decision that race-based admissions were unconstitutional would set back the service’s “warfighting imperative” of building a racially diverse military, according to emails obtained by the Daily Caller News Foundation.
On June 30, 2023, Lt. Gen. Richard Clark, the Air Force Academy’s superintendent, wrote a preview of the consequences that the Supreme Court’s decision striking down affirmative action could have for service academies’ abilities to judge candidates on the basis of race, according to emails the DCNF obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request. Although the justices did not overtly apply the decision to military schools, the records show how the Air Force Academy scrambled to minimize the impact of the June 29 decision on racial diversity goals.
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Democrats in the Virginia General Assembly have signaled their opposition to Governor Glenn Youngkin’s plan to eliminate the state’s unpopular car tax as part of his budget since he unveiled it last week. Despite Youngkin’s calls for additional mental health and education funding, the plan’s detractors say revenue generated through taxing personal vehicles is necessary to fund the commonwealth’s schools.
Youngkin declared before the Virginia House of Delegates on December 20 that the commonwealth’s “car tax belongs in the trash can, not in your mailbox,” and his budget revealed plans to offset revenue lost by eliminating the car tax and lowering the income tax with a sales tax increase.
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As Harvard faces increasing pressure to fire its embattled president, the university’s insular culture and one-sided politics are under the microscope.
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A federally funded program in Virginia to provide coaching and academic recovery to the commonwealth’s students is set to conclude this year, with state officials pointing toward Governor Glenn Youngkin’s ALL in VA plan as a possible way to bridge the gap in resources as pandemic-era federal funding runs dry.
The Engage Virginia program unveiled the the Virginia Department of Education (VDOE) in February is set to conclude on December 31, reported the Richmond Times-Dispatch on Tuesday, explaining that Youngkin’s administration said “the one-time federal funding for the program has been exhausted, and the program is wrapping up.” However, the outlet noted the governor’s office suggested “school divisions could individually engage with the program by using their allocations from the governor’s ALL in VA plan.”
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More and more Army soldiers are reenlisting after being discharged for refusing the COVID-19 vaccine, according to information shared exclusively with The Daily Signal.
The increase comes after Congress repealed the Pentagon’s vaccine mandate and conservative lawmakers applied pressure to Defense Department leaders to be more welcoming of 8,400 service members who were “fired” for their refusal to get the COVID-19 shot.
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Nearly 80% of children between the ages of 12 and 17 have unintentionally come across pornography, and over 50% of them actively seek it out. Even among younger children—those between 9 and 11—37% have seen porn.
Frequent exposure to pornography at a young age cultivates unhealthy views of sexuality and an inclination toward violent behavior. Children may develop a poor understanding of what constitutes a healthy relationship, what behavior is appropriate or inappropriate, how to establish and maintain boundaries, and the importance of respecting other people’s boundaries.
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Scientists are raising concerns that the chronic wasting disease, known as “zombie deer disease,” discovered in Yellowstone National Park deer may spread to humans.
National Parks Service officials said last month they discovered an adult mule deer buck carcass with chronic wasting disease (CWD) in the Wyoming area of the park, and The Guardian called the disease an “epidemic” in an article Friday.
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U.S. Customs and Border Protection encountered a new record number of illegal border crossers in November as the agency pleaded for help from Congress.
Total illegal border crossers encountered along the southwest border in November were 242,418. The majority of apprehensions, 191,113, occurred between ports of entry.
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Virginia Delegate David Reid (D-Loudoun) filed a bill earlier this month that would include privately-created identification cards as permissible forms of voter identification.
Reid filed HB 26 on December 18 to amend existing Virginia law regarding voter identification to allow “any valid identification card containing a photograph of the voter and issued by any private entity that is licensed or certified, in whole or in part, by the Department of Health, Department of Social Services, Department of Medical Assistance Services, or Department of Behavioral Health and Developmental Services.”
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AARP, an organization that represents the interests of retired Americans, spent tens of millions of dollars promoting provisions in the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) that likely benefit the bottom line of one of the group’s major corporate backers.
AARP spent more than $60 million between 2019 and summer 2022 advocating for a provision that eventually made it into the IRA allowing Medicare to negotiate with pharmaceutical companies over the prices of certain drugs, according to an article posted on the group’s website. The provisions would require the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to negotiate the prices of certain drugs with drug manufacturers starting in 2026.
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A coalition of small businesses, U.S. senators and representatives sent a letter to the Biden administration calling for a one-year delay in a new rule requiring businesses with as few as 20 employees to report financial information about the business’ beneficial owners.
Under the rule, small businesses will be required to report personal information about their owners, board members, senior management and legal representation and could face civil or even criminal penalties for failure to do so.
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More than two years after the Biden administration called on all federal agencies to create plans to bring employees who teleworked during the COVID pandemic back to the office, the vast majority of Washington, D.C.’s federal buildings are still sprawling expanses of empty, echoing hallways and offices.
In fact, 17 of 24 federal agencies use an estimated 25% or less of their headquarters’ office capacity, according to an updated survey by the General Accounting Office, a government agency that provides auditing and investigative services for Congress.
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The Biden administration is shelling out $600 million in taxpayer funds to grantmaking organizations to distribute for “environmental justice” projects all across the country, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced Wednesday.
The funds will go to 11 different organizations, which include universities and left-wing groups that focus on advancing social justice causes in addition to their environmental advocacy, according to the EPA’s announcement. Each of the recipients will in turn use the money to provide sub-grants to local organizations to pursue thousands of “environmental justice” projects like environmental jobs training programs and “healthy homes” initiatives.
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The prominent conservative think tank Heritage Foundation has launched a major initiative titled “Project 2025” to rein in the federal bureaucracy by recruiting patriotic Americans to staff the next conservative administration.
“You just don’t have enough time after the election to put together the government,” Heritage Foundation Executive Vice President Derrick Morgan said on “The Heritage Foundation’s 2025 Presidential Transition Project Special Report” hosted by John Solomon and premiered on Real America’s Voice.
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The watchdog overseeing the North American power grid warns that the combination of rapid retirement of coal-fired electricity generation and the increasing reliance on wind and solar are risking large swaths of the United States with blackouts during heat waves and cold snaps.
“This assessment provides clear evidence of growing resource adequacy concerns over the next 10 years,” the latest report states. The North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC) produces annual long-term assessments of potential electricity shortfalls over the next decade. In its latest long-term assessment published Wednesday, NERC stated that a priority action to ensure more grid reliability is increasing natural gas supply infrastructure.
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With all the devastating news about urban crime, drug overdoses, illegal immigration, rampant homelessness, out-of-control budgets, and educational failures, it is encouraging that President Donald Trump has committed his next administration to a saving America’s cities.
As Just the News reported, “With the nation’s first primary state as a backdrop, former President Donald Trump took aim Saturday at Democrats’ urban strongholds, vowing to both secure and revitalize blue cities weary from years of violence and economic decay.”
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Two Virginia Democrats in the State Senate introduced legislation on Tuesday to increase penalties for gun owners in cases of minors committing crimes, with even higher punishments if the adult knew the minor offender was previously charged with a violent crime.
Virginia State Senator-elect Schuyler Vanvalkenburg (D-Henrico) and Senator Adam Ebbin (D-Alexandria) introduced SB 44 to amend the Code of Virginia to make it a Class 1 misdemeanor, “If the owner of a firearm allows a minor to possess his firearm and such a minor” takes the firearm to a school zone or gun-free zone, or uses the firearm “to intentionally or with gross negligence cause bodily injury to himself or another person.”
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A federally funded “home visiting” program advises service providers to watch for signs of abuse against “gender-diverse children,” citing parents who deny their young child the “right” to cross-dress as an example, a document shows.
The Maternal, Infant, and Early Childhood Home Visiting (MIECHV) Program is intended to combat abuse and neglect while promoting “positive parenting” and school readiness among “pregnant people and families” with young children who are at-risk for “poor maternal and child health outcomes,” according to its website. The guidance offered to government workers who visit homes at the request of families categorizes steering a child away from “gender expression” that does not correspond with his or her biological sex as abuse.
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The Chinese parent of a firm slated to develop a manufacturing facility near several Midwest military bases has extensive ties to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), according to a Daily Caller News Foundation investigation based on research conducted by The Heritage Foundation Oversight Project and Heritage Action.
Cnano Technology USA Inc. (Cnano USA) plans to invest in a 333,000-square-foot facility in Johnson County, Kansas, that will manufacture liquid conductive paste for electric vehicle batteries and other devices, according to an August announcement from the Kansas City Area Development Council, which partnered with the state and other parties to attract the firm to Kansas. Cnano USA’s $95 million facility will be built approximately 35 miles from Fort Leavenworth, and 70 miles from the “only operational base for the B-2,” Whiteman Air Force Base.
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As part of the U.S. House Committee on Homeland Security’s investigation into the “dereliction of duty” of U.S. Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, it and members of the House Committee on Oversight and Accountability conducted interviews with eight U.S. Border Patrol chief patrol agents and one deputy chief patrol agent.
The interviews were conducted to obtain more information about operations in their sectors as part of the committee’s ongoing investigation “into the causes, costs, and consequences of the unprecedented crisis at America’s borders, and the role of Secretary Mayorkas in facilitating and maintaining this crisis.”
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A Confederate memorial was removed this week from Arlington National Cemetery and could be relocated to the New Market Battlefield State Historical Park in the Shenandoah Valley if Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin gets his way.
The park is operated by the Virginia Museum of the Civil War, which is run by the Virginia Military Institute, one of the commonwealth’s 15 public universities and the oldest state-supported military college in the U.S.
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December 23, 2023 marks the 50th anniversary of the signing of the Endangered Species Act (ESA) by President Richard M. Nixon. The statute has put enormous power into the hands of bureaucrats at the two federal agencies that administer it – the Interior Department’s U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) and the Commerce Department’s National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS). It has also been adroitly used by environmental groups who have sued the federal government under the ESA to stop projects not of their liking through the broadest possible designation of a “critical habitat” for a plant or animal said to be either threatened or endangered.
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by Jennie Taer Border Patrol encounters of migrants crossing the southern border illegally surpassed 547,000 less than three months into fiscal year 2024, according to preliminary internal data obtained exclusively by the Daily Caller News Foundation. The number of encounters, which reached 547,593 on Thursday morning, is higher than…
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The budget Governor Glenn Youngkin (R) proposed on Wednesday includes nearly $95 million in funding for the Norfolk Coastal Storm Risk Management Project, also known as the Norfolk Sea Wall, but tied $21 million of the funding to the completion of a long-delayed casino.
Youngkin’s budget includes $73.8 million for the project, a series of improvements that includes levees, storm surge barriers, pump stations, and other improvements to manage the flow of water during storms. However, the budget calls for an additional $21 million in funding that is “contingent upon the City applying revenues generated by a casino gaming establishment.”
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Federal, state and city health departments have issued public health alerts about increases of communicable diseases as illegal border crossers arrive in their communities.
Earlier this year, the New York City Health Commissioner instructed New York health-care providers to undergo several precautions and tests in light of “an alarming trend” of diseases spreading among illegal foreign nationals in New York City who arrived from the southern border. Dr. Ashwin Vasan expressed alarm about those arriving who hadn’t been vaccinated for polio or chickenpox and were coming from countries with high rates of infectious tuberculosis.
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A new analysis by the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) reveals that almost 60% of all illegal aliens households in the United States are benefiting from at least one form of taxpayer-funded welfare benefits.
Breitbart reports that the study, written by CIS’ Steven Camarota and Karen Zeigler, found that illegal aliens households, as well as legal immigrants, use “significantly more” welfare than actual American citizens. Of illegal aliens currently occupying land in the U.S., 59% are on welfare that is funded by legal American citizens; 52% of legal immigrants are also using welfare. Meanwhile, less than 40% of American citizens use welfare.
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Oregon is trying to silence “criticism of its election system” through a contract to “identify and mitigate” purported mis-, dis- and malinformation (MDM) related to its elections, surveilling those whom the state deems “misleading,” according to a First Amendment lawsuit against Democratic Gov. Tina Kotek, Secretary of State LaVonne Griffin-Valade and Elections Director Molly Woon.
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Border Patrol had more than 23,000 migrants in custody as of Tuesday evening while releasing more than 6,000 others into the interior of the country, according to internal Customs and Border Protection (CBP) data obtained by the Daily Caller News Foundation.
The latest data provide a window into a record daily totals of illegal immigration at the southern border in recent days. Three border sectors, Del Rio, Rio Grande Valley and Tucson, exceeded capacity as of Tuesday night, according to the data.
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Governor Glenn Youngkin (R) on Wednesday proposed a two-year budget that will see Virginia’s income tax rate decrease, but paired the cut with a sales tax increase that will see some parts of the commonwealth pay nearly 8 percent sales tax.
Youngkin presented his “Unleashing Opportunity Budget” before the Virginia House of Delegates by noting migration trends within the United States that show Americans moving to states with lower taxes and more jobs.
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President Joe Biden’s administration has set another record.
A total of 14,509 illegal aliens were encountered at the southern border Monday by U.S. Customs and Border Protection, the Washington Examiner reported, a record for total daily encounters.
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The Internal Revenue Service on Tuesday announced roughly $1 billion in penalty relief to those owing back taxes from 2020 and 2021, during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic.
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The U.S. natural gas industry is pushing back against the Biden administration’s regulations targeting gas-powered residential furnaces.
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Governor Glenn Youngkin (R) celebrated on Monday as all 131 Virginia school divisions finalized and submitted their “ALL in VA” plans with the governor’s office. Youngkin originally challenged Virginia’s schools to finish their plans by October 16.
In a statement, Youngkin said he is “pleased all of Virginia’s school divisions have heeded my call to urgently and aggressively take action to help our students recover” from the learning loss suffered as a result of pandemic-era restrictions. Youngkin said the submissions mean Virginia schools “embraced that challenge and are committed to getting our students back on track academically.”
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Texas Republican Gov. Greg Abbott on Monday signed a measure to make illegal entry into the Lone Star State a state crime, giving state law enforcement a potentially pivotal tool to combat illegal immigration on its own amid perceived federal apathy.
The law, which is slated to take effect in March, would empower Texas law enforcement to arrest illegal entrants and grant judges the ability to order their deportation, CNN reported.
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The Virginia Hospital & Healthcare Association (VHHA) announced Monday the launch of a new public awareness campaign focused on making sure patients and families in Virginia “know their rights to help them make informed medical decisions.”
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Following the resolution of the six-week United Auto Workers strike last month and the ensuing glut of news coverage, one could be forgiven for believing that private sector unions were experiencing a generational comeback the likes of which haven’t been seen since their halcyon days of the 1950s.
The reality, however, couldn’t be further from the truth: union participation in the private sector is now a tiny sliver of the overall employment picture in the United States. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the unionization rate of private-sector workers currently sits below 6% at just under 7 million workers nationwide – down from 17 million in 1950.
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Never before has so much ‘infrastructure’ been funded and so little built.
Unless, that is, you label Pete Buttegieg’s ‘paternity’ leave as ‘human infrastructure.’ Which, by the way, is exactly what the Biden administration did with its trillion dollar infrastructure boondoggle in 2021.
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