The statue of Gen. Robert E. Lee in Richmond, Virginia, is being taken down Wednesday, amid calls that escalated during last summer’s social justice protests to remove monuments and other memorials to the South’s Confederate leaders that protestors said honor the country’s racist history.
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Florida GOP Gov. Ron DeSantis continues to dismiss the chatter about a run for high office in 2024.
“I just do my job and we work hard,” the governor said in a recent in-state press event. “I hear all this stuff,nand honestly it’s nonsense.”
He also said “speculation” to the contrary is “purely manufactured.”
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With Labor Day upon us, it’s time to take a look at which are the hardest-working states in America, and why. It has been a year that daily and weekly work routines have dramatically changed for tens of millions of Americans.
Researchers for WalletHub, a personal finance website, have once again set out to determine which states are home to the hardest working Americans in their annual report. They compare the 50 states based on both direct and indirect work factors, and then apply 10 different metrics to reach an overall score to rank each state.
The direct work factors, according to WalletHub, include “average workweek hours, employment rate, the share of households where no adults work, the share of workers leaving vacation time unused, share of engaged workers, and idle youth.”
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Shana Chappell, the mother of U.S. Marine Kareem Nikoui who was killed in the deadly terrorist attack in Afghanistan, slammed President Joe Biden for his response to the families of the fallen soldiers.
In a social media post, Chappell called out Biden for “disrespect,” describing that Biden repeatedly checked his watch as the bodies of the victims of the deadly explosion were carried off a plane.
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President Biden declared to a puzzled country on Tuesday that the U.S. evacuation from Afghanistan was an “extraordinary success,” while his Pentagon portrayed a prosaic, workaday process to repatriate Americans still stranded in the war-torn country.
But text messages between U.S. military commanders and private citizens mounting last-minute rescues tell a far different story, one in which pleading American citizens were frantically left behind at the Kabul airport gate this past weekend to face an uncertain fate under Taliban rule while U.S. officials sought to spread the blame between high-ranking generals and the State Department.
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Two prominent Democrats have come out against the ballot effort to defund the Minneapolis Police Department, saying police reform, not defunding, is needed.
Gov. Tim Walz revealed in an interview at the Minnesota State Fair last week that he thinks the ballot question does not provide enough detail and will leave residents “confused” on what they’re voting for or against, Fox 9 reported.
“It’s been distilled down to this: defund police or fund police? I know it’s more complex than that, but I think that poses problems,” Walz said.
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The Office of Naval Intelligence (ONI) has informed active duty and retired service members that they cannot “disrespect” President Joe Biden or other senior government leadership, even during the chaotic and deadly withdrawal from Afghanistan.
The warning came in an email, according to The Daily Wire, from the ONI’s chief of staff, reminding service members, current and retired, that they are “prohibited from disrespecting senior government leadership (e.g. the President, Vice President, Congress, Secretary of Defense, Service Secretaries, etc.).”
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President Joe Biden told those responsible for the attacks on Kabul airport today: “We will hunt you down and make you pay.”
Biden made the remarks during an address to the nation on Thursday regarding the terrorist attack that killed 12 U.S. service members outside Kabul airport in Afghanistan.
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Capitol Hill Republicans on Thursday intensified their calls for President Biden’s resignation following explosions outside a Kabul, Afghanistan, airport, killing four Marines and wounding or injuring dozens more while also throwing U.S. evacuations into further disarray.
“4 US Marines killed in this morning’s attacks in #Afghanistan and another 3 wounded,” Georgia Rep. Jody Hice tweeted. “President Biden is responsible for every single drop of blood spilled in his botched withdrawal. #BidenMustResignNow.”
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Two explosions were reported in Kabul, Afghanistan, Thursday, killing at least 70 people, and injuring dozens more, including multiple Marines, eleven of whom have died. (See update below for the latest on casualties).
A suicide bomb reportedly detonated outside the Hamid Karzai International Airport (HKIA), and another bomb went off at the nearby Baron Hotel, where Americans have been gathering for rescue and evacuation.
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Washington Democrats’ efforts to pass their signature, $3.5 trillion spending package is in jeopardy of falling apart, as House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, leader of the Democrat-controlled chamber, does not appear to have the votes this week to advance the measure awaiting in the Senate.
The votes are set to be cast Monday and Tuesday, with House members returning for two days during their August recess to try to move forward the pending package.
Pelosi can afford to lose only three votes in the narrowly divided chamber. However, nine moderate Democrats have vowed to oppose the two voting measures until the House passes a roughly $1 trillion, bipartisan infrastructure spend package passed in the Senate before the recess.
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Polling ahead of the 2021 NFL season indicates that, despite an increasingly political landscape for the sport and its fans, Americans overwhelmingly would prefer that the National Anthem continue to be the sole anthem played prior to games.
According to a recent poll conducted by Newt Gingrich’s American Majority Project in conjunction with McLaughlin & Associates, a total of 61% of Americans believe that “only” the American National Anthem should be played at NFL Games. That figure ticks up slightly to 64% among Republicans, and falls to 58% among Independents, while 11% of those polled said they don’t know.
File
National Gingrich 360 Anthem X-tabs 8-3-21 .pdf
The poll was conducted in the wake of the NFL’s recent decision to play “Lift Every Voice and Sing” – often referred to as the black national anthem – before all games during the upcoming season, ahead of the playing of the American National Anthem. The song was initially introduced by the NFL when it was sung by Alicia Keys at the Super Bowl for the 2020-2021 season. The decision to play the song before each game is reportedly part of the league’s quarter-billion dollar investment in social justice messaging and initiatives.
School board recall efforts are sweeping the country, with many driven by parents claiming Critical Race Theory (CRT) is infecting schools, demanding schools reopen in person, and arguing that boards are consumed by virtue signaling.
According to Ballotpedia, 58 such efforts against 144 board members have taken place in 2021. Those are both all-time highs since it started tracking school board recall efforts in 2006, and far above the next highest year, 2010.
Only one school board member has been removed in 2021, however, while three resigned and seven were retained in elections. One is scheduled for a November recall vote in Kansas for upholding a mask mandate.
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President Joe Biden is facing bipartisan backlash over the deteriorating situation in Afghanistan ahead of the 2022 midterm elections as lawmakers from both parties call for an investigation into his administration’s handling of the U.S. withdrawal.
Democrats vowed “tough questions” Tuesday as they used words like “flawed,” “failures” and “horrifying” to describe the administration’s exit strategy and the scenes unfolding in Kabul.
The president, for his part, is not changing course and vows to complete a full withdrawal of all U.S. forces from Afghanistan. But he now faces the specter of his own party investigating his team’s conduct and competence in the shadows of a 2022 election where control of Congress is up for grabs.
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Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced Tuesday he will resign from office in 14 days, bowing to pressure following a bombshell attorney general report accusing him of violating federal and state laws involving sexual harassment of subordinates.
Earlier Tuesday, an attorney for the governor held a press conference in an attempt to discredit elements of the New York Attorney General’s report, which was released last week. Rita Glavin, who is representing the governor, said “This is about the veracity and credibility of a report that is being used to impeach and take down an elected official.”
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A liberal nonprofit that accused President Donald Trump of unleashing a “surge in white supremacy and hate” donated $85,000 last fall to election administrators in Georgia’s largest county as part of a campaign to turn out black votes in the 2020 election. Auditors now want some of that money returned.
The Fulton County Auditor declared this month that county election officials failed to spend all of the Southern Poverty Law Center’s grant for buying absentee ballot drop boxes and did not comply with one of the grant’s primary requirements to publicly disclose how many ballots were collected in the boxes.
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A federal court has blocked President Joe Biden’s mandate that would require doctors to perform transgender surgeries against their consciences.
Judge Reed O’Connor of the United States District Court for the Northern District of Texas, Wichita Falls Division, granted “a permanent injunction” to the Christian plaintiffs “to be exempt from the government’s requirement to perform abortions and gender-transition procedures.”
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State legislatures in six states limited their governors’ emergency powers wielded during the COVID-19 pandemic, arguing executives have overextended their authority.
As of June 2021, lawmakers in 46 states have introduced legislation stripping governors of certain emergency powers, according to USA Today. Legislatures justified their actions as necessary to restore a balance between the branches of state government, pointing to examples of executive overreach and the centralization of power in the hands of governors.
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A day after the November election, as Donald Trump and other Republican candidates clung to evaporating leads in Georgia, vote counters in Atlanta were confronted by a paper ballot known only by its anonymizing number 5150-232-18.
A Dominion Voting machine had rejected the ballot on election night because the voter had filled in boxes for both Trump and his Democratic opponent Joe Biden, an error known as an “overvote.” The machine determined neither candidate should get a tally, and the ballot was referred for human review.
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As part of a review of hundreds of pages of election documents from Georgia’s Fulton County, Just the News reviewed dozens of disputed ballots in which election workers known as “adjudicators” determined that a voter intended to vote for Democratic candidate Joe Biden instead of Republican incumbent Donald Trump.
Just the News’s review of the Fulton documents revealed a system rife with subjective judgment of thousands of ballots on the part of a small number of election workers, all of it governed by a confusing patchwork of state laws that simultaneously seemed to sanction and proscribe the practice of ballot adjudication.
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The Rhode Island mother who turned to public records law to learn what the school district was teaching her daughter is now a defendant in a lawsuit by the state and local teachers union.
The Rhode Island and South Kingstown chapters of the National Education Association sued Nicole Solas and the school district this week to stop the latter from releasing records sought by Solas, including curriculum and policies related to critical race theory, antiracism, gender theory and children’s sexuality.
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The Congressional Budget Office estimated Thursday that the bipartisan Senate infrastructure bill will add $256 billion to the deficit over the next decade, undercutting its backers’ claims the spending had been offset.
In FY2020, the deficit hit a record $3.1 trillion. So far in FY2021, the deficit is $2.2 trillion. The national debt is climbing to $29 trillion for the first time in U.S. history.
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As the number of illegal immigrants crossing the U.S.-Mexico border reaches a 20-year high and COVID-19 cases consequently spike, Republican lawmakers are blasting the Biden administration for the converging security and public health crises.
July saw the highest number of illegal immigrants crossing the border in over 20 years, with a total of 210,000. Simultaneously, fewer MS-13 gang members have been caught crossing the border this year than in each of the previous three years, and COVID-positive migrants are flooding the Texas border town of McAllen.
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The U.S. Department of Justice’s recent guidance on the process of state election audits indicates that the federal agency is apparently deeply unsettled by the string of election audits and election reform efforts carried out by state Republicans since last November’s presidential election.
The guidance, distributed last week and directed in part toward state legislatures, instructs investigators on “how states must comply with federal law” when conducting election audits. It also addresses efforts by some state legislatures to repeal emergency COVID-19 voting rules that other states have in some cases sought to make permanent.
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Twitter permanently suspended several accounts dedicated to documenting the Arizona audit. The social media giant also permanently suspended other similar or affiliated accounts covering the audit or calls for an audit in Michigan, Wisconsin, Nevada, Georgia, and Pennsylvania.
The suspended accounts were: @arizonaaudit, @AuditWarRoom, @AuditMichigan, @AuditWisconsin, @AuditNevada, @AuditGeorgia, @Audit_Arizona and @Audit_PA. The latter 7 accounts are associated with an Instagram account, @auditwarroom, that hasn’t been suspended from the Facebook-owned platform. That account notified the public that it joined GETTR, a social media platform created by former President Donald Trump’s aide Jason Miller.
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Wisconsin State Representative Janel Brandtjen (R-Menomonee Falls) pledged to conduct a full forensic audit of ballots cast in the state’s November 2020 election.
“I’ve traveled around our state as Chair of the Campaigns and Elections committee, voters have made it clear that they want a thorough, cyber-forensic examination of tabulators, ballot marking devices and other election equipment, which I will be helping facilitate on behalf of the committee as the chair,” Brandtjen, who serves as the head of the Wisconsin Assembly elections committee, said in a statement.
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PHOENIX, Arizona – Dozens of good-spirited attendees were already lining up Friday evening outside the Arizona Federal Theatre in anticipation of the “Protect Our Elections” rally Saturday with former President Donald Trump hosted by Turning Point Action.
Most were planning to spend the night, despite the weather forecast that includes thunderstorms during the overnight after a day that started that way and continued with rain showers throughout most of the day.
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After completing a 10 minute flight to the edge of space, Jeff Bezos announced on Tuesday that he is gifting $100 million each to Van Jones and José Andrés.
According to Bezos, the new philanthropic endeavor, The Courage and Civility Award, awarded to the two “recognizes leaders who aim high, and who pursue solutions with courage, and who always do so with civility.”
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Sixty-seven Texas House Democrats fled Austin Monday for Washington, D.C. on private planes in a political maneuver that Gov. Greg Abbott said only hurts Texans.
Shortly after 2 p.m., House Democrats confirmed in a statement they were not returning to the state Capitol to complete an ongoing special session, which began July 8 and lasts for 30 days.
By leaving Texas, House Democrats avoided being arrested by a “Call of the House,” which Speaker of the House Dade Phelan could have initiated had the members left Tuesday, when the chamber is scheduled to be back in session. Because the legislature was out of session on Monday, Democrats had time to leave after having met over the weekend.
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Massive protests broke out in Cuba on Sunday, with citizens shouting “freedom!” as they demonstrated against the corrupt and incompetent Communist regime. Cubans trapped in dire economic conditions took to the streets in over 32 Cuban cities, according to the Washington Times.
“Down with the dictatorship,” “We want liberty!” protesters reportedly chanted.
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Former President Trump took the stage to a standing ovation and a rowdy crowd, while headlining the large gathering of the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in Dallas on Sunday.
In his speech that lasted approximately 90 minutes, the former commander-in-chief highlighted a variety of key areas that Republicans across the country are focused on, including the 2022 midterms, the Biden administration’s policies, and his lawsuit against Big Tech platforms.
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YouTube deleted the American Conservative Union’s (ACU) video featuring former President Trump announcing his class-action lawsuit against Big Tech, citing an alleged violation of its COVID-19 terms and conditions.
The ACU, which hosts the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), received “a strike” on their account from YouTube on July 9, preventing them from uploading new content for a week. This includes ACU’s CPAC 2021 Part 2 in Dallas, Texas, and Trump’s CPAC speech scheduled for Sunday, the organization said in a statement.
In the deleted YouTube video of Trump’s announcement of a lawsuit against Big Tech, which includes Google, he also cited a medical study on hydroxychloroquine as a therapeutic for COVID-19.
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With each passing day in Afghanistan the Taliban grows stronger, and the pro-American government forces grow weaker. Anecdotally, you can see the momentum building in the news coverage.
The Foundation for Defense of Democracies’ Long War Journal, which has been tracking war in Afghanistan for years, estimates that as of Sunday the Taliban controlled 213 districts. It reports that the government controls 70 districts, and some 115 districts are being contested. Thus, after the United States, NATO, and our Afghan allies spent 20 years fighting to create a post-Taliban country, the evidence is growing that we have lost.
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The National Education Association (NEA), the largest labor and teachers’ union in the U.S., has voted to spread critical race theory as parents across the nation are fighting against it.
The union is preparing to commit $127,600 to advance critical race theory, according to the Epoch Times.
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Allen West, a retired Army officer, former congressman and Texas GOP chairman, used Independence Day to launch a Republican primary challenge to Texas Gov. Greg Abbott.
West released a YouTube video and made an appearance at Sojourn Church in Carrollton, Texas, to announce his 2022 bid, saying he was focused on illegal immigration, the Democrat assault on energy resources and human trafficking.
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As a very young man, I was fortunate enough to start my own company out of my apartment using a small amount of investment capital from friends and family. Over time, that business grew to have over 6,000 employees and revenues in excess of $2 billion. Over nearly a 40-year span, my team and I built what some would consider a remarkable track record, as measured by both sales and profits.
Because of my experience growing that business, I feel a special kinship with small, privately owned businesses and their owners. I also come from a middle-class background, one that shaped me into the person I am today. It is through both the lens of entrepreneur and member of the middle-class that I look through when reflecting upon this Independence Day.
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Former President Donald Trump on Saturday struck a brazenly American tone at a Sarasota, Fla. rally, painting the Biden administration as radically un-American as he hailed the country’s legacy stemming from its July 4, 1776 origins.
“The mission of all of us here tonight is to preserve the legacy of July 4, 1776, and to defend our liberty from the radical left movement,” Trump told the enormous crowd at the event.
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In a 6-3 vote, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld on Thursday two Arizona rules that were implemented in an attempt to increase overall election security.
Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich celebrated the decision handed down by the court. “I am thankful the justices upheld states’ ability to pass and maintain commonsense election laws, at a time when our country needs it most.”
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Former President Donald Trump weighed in on Wednesday on the difficulty and issues facing the New York City mayor Democratic primary.
“Just like in the 2020 Presidential Election, it was announced overnight in New York City that vast irregularities and mistakes were made and that Eric Adams, despite an almost insurmountable lead, may not win the race,” Trump said in a statement while highlighting the issues plaguing the race.
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The election for the next mayor of New York City is in a state of confusion after the city’s board of elections released a new tally late Tuesday in the Democratic primary, then abruptly removed the tabulations citing a “discrepancy” due to counting thousands of test ballots.
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A tweet by Georgia Public Broadcasting (GPB) News writer Stephen Fowler on Saturday revealed more chain of custody document discrepancies in Fulton County’s absentee ballot drop box transfer forms.
The tweet included a partial image – the very top only — of two transfer forms Fowler claims were part of an open records response GPB News received on Wednesday from Fulton County election officials.
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Georgia Public Broadcasting News, part of the taxpayer-funded network of state PBS television stations and NPR radio stations, reported Wednesday, June 16, 2021, that they received from Fulton County all but eight of the 385 missing absentee ballot drop box transfer forms The Georgia Star News has reported on.
After six months and several open records requests, 385 of the transfer forms that document the chain of custody of absentee ballots deposited in drop boxes and transferred to the county registrar during the November 3, 2020, election have still not been provided to The Star News.
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Former President Donald Trump released a statement on Thursday praising Georgia Star News journalist Laura Baigert for her investigative reporting efforts.
“Thank you and congratulations to Laura Baigert of the Georgia Star News on the incredible reporting you have done. Keep going! The scam is all unraveling fast!” President Trump said of her reporting.
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On May 3, 2021, six months after the November 3, 2020 presidential election, Fulton County election officials provided The Georgia Star News with a thumb drive containing 30 files those officials said complied with an Open Records Request made by The Star News. The request made to Fulton County was one in a series of Open Records Requests made to all 159 counties in Georgia to produce all chain of custody documents, known as absentee ballot drop box transfer forms, from that election.
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A leaked, official document sent to all U.S. “Diplomatic and Consular posts” encourages officials to display signs of support for the Black Lives Matter agenda.
The document provides officials within the department “talking points” on how to handle and discuss the anniversary of the killing of George Floyd in Minnesota last year.
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A ruling issued by a Georgia judge on Friday will allow officials to conduct an audit of roughly 145,000 absentee ballots cast in Fulton County in the 2020 election.
The scope of the audit will allow for the examination of signatures on these ballots to ensure that they are legitimate.
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The Center for Renewing America is seeking to share stories of critical race theory (CRT) in action across the United States.
The group is working with America First Legal, a legal group created by Stephen Miller and other Trump administration officials. The two organizations share the goal of fighting CRT in various formats across the country.
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As expected, Joel Greenberg, the former elected tax collector in Seminole County (near Orlando) and friend and ally of Florida Congressman Matt Gaetz, plead guilty on Monday to federal charges. The charges included sex trafficking a minor, ID theft, stalking and fraud. Greenberg reached a deal with federal officials which cut the original 33 charges to six, but is still facing the mandatory minimum prison sentence of 12 years. Greenberg has agreed to “cooperate fully” with federal prosecutors.
Now the focus will turn to Gaetz.
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House Republicans elected New York Republican Rep. Elise Stefanik as GOP conference chair on Friday.
California Rep. Darrell Issa, who voted for Stefanik, told reporters as he left the GOP meeting that “it’s a very united conference.”
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House Republicans voted Wednesday morning in favor or removing Wyoming Rep. Liz Cheney from her leadership post.
Cheney was the House GOP conference chairwoman, the No. 3 Republican in the chamber. The vote to remove Cheney occurred via a voice vote, according to Illinois Republican Rep. Adam Kinzinger. Following the vote, Cheney told reporters she would work to make sure former President Trump is not elected again.
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