Virginia has again ranked first in CNBC’s annual America’s Top States for Business index, its sixth time topping the chart since CNBC started the survey in 2007.
States are ranked on 128 metrics in 10 “broad categories of competitiveness” selected through consultation with business and policy specialists and the states.
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The Biden administration announced Thursday that it is spending billions of dollars more to help automakers mass-produce electric vehicles (EVs).
The Department of Energy (DOE) is spending $1.7 billion to help manufacturers convert closed or struggling manufacturing facilities to produce EVs or EV components in eight states, including swing states like Pennsylvania and Georgia, as the American EV market struggles. The funding complements $12 billion the DOE unveiled in August 2023 to help major manufacturers retrofit plants for EV production, and the agency projects that the cash announced Thursday will allow for the retention of 15,000 union workers while creating nearly 3,000 jobs.
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The lithium-ion batteries that are essential to the green energy transition are an “unrecognized and potentially growing” source of chemical pollution, according to a new study published in Nature.
The study sought to fill in knowledge gaps about whether or not chemicals used in lithium-ion battery components can pose environmental hazards, a key question given that Western policymakers are relying on the technology to help replace fossil fuel-fired infrastructure and meet long-term emissions reductions targets. After conducting “a cradle-to-grave evaluation” on the subject and collecting dozens of samples in the U.S. and Europe, the study’s authors “[confirmed] the clean energy sector as an unrecognized and potentially growing source” of chemical pollution, and that the growing prominence of lithium-ion batteries around the world makes pollution from their waste “an issue of global concern.”
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The word charade has several meanings, and including an act or event that is clearly false (Cambridge Dictionary), something done just for show (Vocabulary.com), or a situation in which people pretend that something is true when it clearly is not (Oxford Leaner’s Dictionary).
The charade I refers to is President Biden’s $7.5 billion dollar investment to install 500,000 electric charging stations along America’s highways by 2030. A reliable and convenient public EV charging infrastructure is critical to achieve the President’s goal of meeting the recent EPA CO2 emission regulation that require nearly 72 percent of U.S. new light vehicle sales to be fully electric or plug-in hybrid by 2032. Without diving deeper into the announcement, one would likely assume that $7.5 billion is sufficient to construct the 500,000 charging stations, one every 50 miles along the nation’s highways.
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The environment, social and governance (ESG) investing movement has faced a lot of criticism over the past couple years for undermining fiduciary responsibility and pushing progressive agendas through an undemocratic process.
At the Energy Future Forum presented by RealClearEnergyWednesday, Terrence Keeley, author and former senior advisor at Blackrock, argued that ESG is also misallocating resources and doing nothing for the environment it claims to protect.
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A House subcommittee is exposing the Transportation Security Administration’s decision to let Cuban agents visit a U.S. airport and tour agency facilities, a potentially embarrassing episode for the Biden administration as polls show Latino voters are up for grabs in the 2024 election.
Rep. Carlos Giminez, R-Fla., the chairman of the Subcommittee on Transportation and Maritime Security, has scheduled a hearing Wednesday titled “Protecting the Homeland – Examining TSA’s Relationships with U.S. Adversaries” that will focus heavily on the episode a few weeks ago at the Miami airport that has drawn widespread condemnation, particularly in the Cuban ex-pat community in America.
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Installation of the country’s largest offshore wind farm began in earnest just two months ago off the coast of Virginia, and the Biden administration announced Friday it will be auctioninganother even bigger wind energy lease sale off the coast of the commonwealth.
Dominion Energy leased the approximately 113,000 acres that would become the site of the Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind project in 2013. After installing two pilot turbines in 2020, the utility began the installation of the rest of its 176 turbines in May.
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George Stephanopoulos’ interview of President Biden was painful to watch — unless, probably, you’re Donald Trump. Even partisan Trump supporters could feel sorry for the president — though that would be a mistake: if you were in Biden’s shoes, he would not feel sorry for you.
At least some people were not sure Stephanopoulos would ask, and then press, hard questions. He did. But there was no real reason to suppose he would let Biden off lightly: he surely wants the Democrats to win the election as much as any other partisan Democrat, and letting Biden remain the party’s candidate is — now, clearly — not in their best interest.
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In a recent report, “Powering Human Advancement,” The Heritage Foundation laid bare the truth that the driving force behind wealth creation and raising human development standards is the innovative harnessing of energy.
As historian Vaclav Smil sees it, “Energy is the only universal currency.”
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Green Energy Failure: Supply chain issues, financing, fleet-adequate solutions, engineering costs, and inadequate software among roadblocks cited in the survey.
Businesses building electric vehicle charging stations say that finding enough electricity is a major — perhaps fatal — problem.
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Social media plays a significant role in shaping the opinions of those 35 and under — it’s the primary news source for most in that age group, one survey found.
Some stats report that daily screen time for 16- to 24-year-olds is nearly eight hours among females and seven hours among males. To put that in perspective — that’s equivalent to the average time in a school day.
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A new report from the House of Representatives claims that the Biden Administration repeatedly pressured the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) into speeding up the approval of the Chinese Coronavirus vaccine developed by Pfizer.
According to the Daily Caller, the staff report from the Subcommittee on the Administrative State, Regulatory Reform, and Antitrust alleges that the FDA did not follow the usual regulatory guidelines when it came to approving the Pfizer vaccine. As such, when the FDA gave its approval to the vaccine, it allowed the Biden Administration to more quickly issue a mandate forcing federal workers and active duty troops to take the Pfizer vaccine or else risk losing their jobs.
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For three and a half years, Joe Biden’s handlers have hidden him from public view and kept him locked deep inside the confines of the White House or at Rehoboth Beach—far away from “we the people.”
For three and a half years, Biden has barely averaged more than a 30-hour work week and has almost never said anything without the assistance of a teleprompter or a notecard. When he does speak, he gives terse remarks that rarely last more than 15 minutes and are almost never in prime time, meaning his audience is negligible.
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Human trafficking brings in $236 billion dollars a year, according to the International Labor Organization.
Microsoft’s 2023 revenue totaled $212 billion.
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A nation hungry for solutions to its woes got a heavy dose Thursday night of prescriptions from a confident and concise Donald Trump in the first presidential debate of 2024 while the man who succeeded him in the White House alarmed his own Democrat ranks with a steady stream of mumbles, blank stares and major bumbles.
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Virginia’s permit-tracking website has expanded from including permits from three state government departments to six.
Virginia residents and businesses can now follow online in real time the permits they’ve submitted to the Virginia Department of Health, Department of Transportation, and Department of Conservation and Recreation, as well as permits from the state Department of Environmental Quality, Virginia Marine Resources Commission and Department of Energy.
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Instagram recommends sexualized content to young teenagers within minutes of their first log in, according to studies from The Wall Street Journal and Northeastern computer-science professor Laura Edelson.
The studies, which consisted of scrolling through Instagram Reels using new test accounts with listed ages of 13, found that adult sex-content creators appeared in the test accounts’ feeds in as little as three minutes, according to The Wall Street Journal. Additionally, if a test account chose to skip other forms of content and watch sexually suggestive content to completion, its feed would be dominated by sexualized content in under 20 minutes.
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Nearly half of American electric vehicle (EV) owners want to buy an internal combustion engine model the next time they buy a car, according to a new study from McKinsey and Company, a leading consulting firm.
Approximately 46 percent of Americans who own an EV want to go back to a standard vehicle for their next purchase, citing issues like inadequate charging infrastructure and affordability, according to McKinsey’s study, which was obtained and reviewed by the Daily Caller News Foundation. The study’s findings further suggest that the Biden administration’s EV push is struggling to land with American consumers, after 46 percent of respondents indicated that they are unlikely or very unlikely to purchase an EV in a June poll conducted by The Associated Press and the University of Chicago’s Energy Policy Institute.
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Wikipedia entries are more likely to paint public figures on the right in a negative light than the left, a Manhattan Institute study released Thursday found.
The study analyzed the sentiments of 1,628 words that were used in reference to political topics and found that Wikipedia generally uses more negative terms in reference to right-leaning public figures, and less when referencing left-leaning figures. The results would suggest that Wikipedia is contradicting its “neutral-point-of-view” policy, according to the study.
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Taral Patel, a Democratic candidate for Fort Bend, Texas, precinct commissioner and a Biden administration appointee, is accused of using fake online accounts to post racist messages about himself and then publicly accusing Republicans of being responsible for it.
Patel was arrested last week for the third-degree felony of online impersonation and the misdemeanor of misrepresenting his identity, court records show. He posted $22,500 in total for two bonds – one on each of the charges – and he surrendered his passport.
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Various aviation and airline executives and experts spoke Wednesday on safety in the industry at an event hosted by POLITICO.
Speakers included Bob Jordan, CEO of Southwest Airlines, Sen. Jerry Moran, R-Kans. and Federal Aviation Administration Administrator Michael Whitaker and other executives from the airline industry.
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A study has found that tech companies can influence the decisions of large numbers of undecided voters with search suggestions on search engines.
The study, conducted by Dr. Robert Epstein and several other affiliates of the American Institute for Behavioral Research and Technology (AIBRT), sought to determine whether the suggestions that pop into the search bar when using engines like Google can influence the voting behavior of undecideds. Its findings suggest that the “search suggestion effect” (SSE) is real and powerful, so much so that search engine operators controlling search suggestions could have “the power to shift a large number of votes without people’s awareness,” Epstein told the Daily Caller News Foundation.
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Criminals are increasingly stealing cables from electric vehicle (EV) charging stations around the country, according to The Associated Press.
In a growing trend, thieves are targeting EV chargers to cut off their cables and take the valuable copper contained inside the wiring, often rendering the vandalized chargers useless until repairs can be made, according to the AP. Especially if they accelerate, the thefts could be another hurdle for the Biden administration’s major EV push, which has struggled to beat back consumers’ concerns about EV range and charger availability.
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President Joe Biden has pledged to install 500,000 public electric vehicle (EV) chargers around the U.S. by 2030, but logistical hurdles may be too much to overcome.
The Biden administration landed $7.5 billion to build out a network of public EV charging stations around the country in the bipartisan infrastructure package of 2021, but those funds have only led to a handful of operational charging stations to date. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg reaffirmed the administration’s goal to build 500,000 chargers with the money by 2030 during a May television appearance on CBS News, but challenges like adding transmission lines, navigating the permitting process and coordinating with utility companies figure to make the goal improbable.
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The RealClearMarkets/TIPP Economic Optimism Index, a leading gauge of consumer sentiment, dropped sharply 3.1 percent in June to 40.5. Since September 2021, the index has remained in negative territory for 34 consecutive months. June’s reading of 40.5 is 17.6 percent lower than the historic average of 49.2.
Optimism among investors edged up 0.4 percent from 46.3 in May to 46.5 in June, while it slumped by 6.0 percent among non-investors, from 40.1 in May to 37.7 in June.
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Big names in the cryptocurrency and venture capital worlds, some of whom are former Democratic donors, are throwing their support behind former President Donald Trump.
Venture capitalists David Sacks and Chamath Palihapitiya organized a high-dollar fundraiser for the former president Thursday night in San Francisco, raising $12 million for the Trump 47 Joint Fundraising Committee at a sold-out fundraiser where tickets cost up to $500,000 per couple. Coinbase Chief Legal Officer Paul Grewal, prolific tech investor Shervin Pishevar as well as Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss, famous for their dispute with Mark Zuckerberg over the founding of Facebook, all attended the event, a source familiar with the fundraiser told the Daily Caller News Foundation
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Experts on artificial intelligence raised concerns about the implications of AI’s rapid growth at a panel discussion in Washington, D.C. Tuesday.
The American Enterprise Institute hosted a series of panel discussions surrounding the deployment of AI. Panelists discussed safety protocols, workforce development and regulatory initiatives.
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Democratic strategist James Carville on Thursday advocated for media outlets to boost their biased coverage of former President Donald Trump to help ensure he does not win the upcoming presidential election.
The New York Times’ executive editor Joe Kahn in May told Semafor his publication’s duty is to cover what Americans care about rather than what benefits President Joe Biden and hurts Trump. Carville on the “Politics War Room” took issue with this approach, saying that because of the stakes of the election, media outlets should take a more active role in advocating against Trump and people aligned with him instead of seeking to be objective.
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Presidential debates have traditionally run commercial free, but CNN reportedly plans to break from that tradition during its scheduled June 27 live debate.
The cable news network plans to run commercial breaks during the scheduled June 27 debate, according to the entertainment magazine Variety, citing unnamed sources.
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by Madeleine Hubbard China on Sunday landed an unmanned spacecraft on the far side of the moon in a landmark mission to retrieve what is expected to be the first ever rock and soil samples from the dark lunar hemisphere. The Chang’e-6 craft, which is equipped with its own launcher,…
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The Associated Press announced that it would partner with five other outlets to create a nonpartisan news initiative prior to the upcoming 2024 election. These outlets appear to be predominantly, if not exclusively backed by liberal donors.
The AP announced Tuesday that it would be partnering with five local outlets in order to “expand the reach of local news ahead of the 2024 U.S. presidential election and increasing access to AP’s nonpartisan journalism, especially in communities that may have limited access to fact-based news.”
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This summer the Supreme Court will rule on a case involving what a district court called perhaps “the most massive attack against free speech” ever inflicted on the American people. In Murthy v. Missouri, plaintiffs ranging from the attorneys general of Missouri and Louisiana to epidemiologists from Harvard and Stanford allege that the federal government violated the First Amendment by working with outside groups and social media platforms to surveil, flag, and quash dissenting speech – characterizing it as mis-, dis- and mal-information – on issues ranging from COVID-19 to election integrity.
The case has helped shine a light on a sprawling network of government agencies and connected NGOs that critics describe as a censorship industrial complex. That the U.S. government might aggressively clamp down on protected speech, and, certainly at the scale of millions of social media posts, may constitute a recent development. Reporting by RCI and other outlets – including Racket News’ new “Censorship Files” series, and continuing installments of the “Twitter Files” series to which it, Public, and others have contributed – and congressional probes continue to reveal the substantial breadth and depth of contemporary efforts to quell speech that authorities deem dangerous. But the roots of what some have dubbed the censorship industrial complex stretch back decades, born of an alliance between government, business, and academia that Democrat Sen. William Fulbright termed the “military-industrial-academic-complex” – building on President Eisenhower’s formulation – in a 1967 speech.
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For years, tech giants in California and Washington have been leading the charge to eliminate fossil fuels from the grid. Microsoft, Google, Meta and Apple, for example, are members of Climate Group RE100, an organization of major corporations who are dedicated to accelerating “change toward zero-carbon grids at scale by 2040.”
In 2018, Apple proclaimed that it was globally powered entirely by 100 percent renewable energy.
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AI-powered image generators were back in the news earlier this year, this time for their propensity to create historically inaccurate and ethically questionable imagery. These recent missteps reinforced that, far from being the independent thinking machines of science fiction, AI models merely mimic what they’ve seen on the web, and the heavy hand of their creators artificially steers them toward certain kinds of representations. What can we learn from how OpenAI’s image generator created a series of images about Democratic and Republican causes and voters last December?
OpenAI’s ChatGPT 4 service, with its built-in image generator DALL-E, was asked to create an image representative of the Democratic Party (shown below). Asked to explain the image and its underlying details, ChatGPT explained that the scene is set in a “bustling urban environment [that] symbolizes progress and innovation . . . cities are often seen as hubs of cultural diversity and technological advancement, aligning with the Democratic Party’s focus on forward-thinking policies and modernization.” The image, ChatGPT continued, “features a diverse group of individuals of various ages, ethnicities, and genders. This diversity represents inclusivity and unity, key values of the Democratic Party,” along with the themes of “social justice, civil rights, and addressing climate change.”
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The Chinese Communist Party has launched a $47.5 billion state-backed investment fund to strategically boost the semiconductor industry in competition with the U.S., Reuters reported Monday.
The 344 billion yuan investment is the biggest of three funds that have been established, with the first being created in 2014, providing 138.7 billion yuan in capital, and the second in 2019, providing 204 billion yuan, according to Reuters. China is subsidizing its semiconductor industry in a bid to compete with the U.S. in the manufacturing of the technology, with chips showing good potential in both military and consumer aspects.
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The cable news channel CNN has suffered its lowest primetime ratings since 1991, in yet another indication that traditional television news coverage, as well as increasingly left-wing media, has taken a massive hit to its viewership in recent years.
As reported by the New York Post, the week of May 13th through May 19th saw the channel’s 8 PM to 11 PM programming draw just 83,000 viewers in the most crucial demographic of viewers between the ages of 25 and 54. In that same time period, Fox News saw over 186,000 viewers in the same demographic and the same time slots. MSNBC came in second with 111,000 viewers.
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Artificial intelligence (AI) and its integration within various sectors is moving at a speed that couldn’t have been imagined just a few years ago. As a result, the United States now stands on the brink of a new era of cybersecurity challenges. With AI technologies becoming increasingly sophisticated, the potential for their exploitation by malicious actors grows exponentially.
Because of this evolving threat, government agencies like the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), alongside private sector entities, must urgently work to harden America’s defenses to account for any soft spots that may be exploited. Failure to do so could have dire consequences on a multitude of levels, especially as we approach the upcoming U.S. presidential election, which is likely to be the first to contend with the profound implications of AI-driven cyber warfare.
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A far-left media organization, initially funded by billionaire George Soros and known for labeling conservatives as “racists,” has laid off several of its staff members.
“We’re confronting a legal assault on multiple fronts and given how rapidly the media landscape is shifting, we need to be extremely intentional about how we allocate resources in order to stay effective,” said Media Matters president Angelo Carusone. Nobody does what Media Matters does. So, we’re taking this action now to ensure that we are sustainable, sturdy and successful for whatever lies ahead.”
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Apple’s recent ad for a new, thinner iPad featured a hydraulic press smashing everything the new gadget could supposedly replace: paints, musical instruments, a clay bust, arcade cabinets, record players, books.
The new iPad promises a future in which humanity has forgotten the whisper of the brush over the canvas, the vibration of a guitar string, the joy of finding a note tucked into an old used book, and the easy camaraderie of children cheering each other on as they take turns at a challenging arcade game. The craftsmanship that went into these objects is now obsolete. You don’t have to go anywhere, touch anything.
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The New York Times is widely regarded as the newspaper of record in the United States. Founded in 1851 to appeal to a cultured, intellectual readership rather than a mass audience, the Gray Lady has won a record-breaking 137 Pulitzer Prizes, including for its reporting on the infamous Pentagon Papers.
In times of sharp political polarization, however, the reputation of the Times, like many other outlets, has suffered significant damage. Arguably, much of this is self-inflicted, with the paper increasingly setting aside its iconic moniker “All the News That’s Fit to Print” in pursuit of activist journalism.
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More than 3 in 4 Americans fear abuses of artificial intelligence will affect the 2024 presidential election, and many are not confident they can detect faked photos, videos or audio.
AI & Politics ’24, led by Lee Rainie and Jason Husser at Elon University, found 78 percent believe it is likely artificial intelligence will be abused to impact the outcome between President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump. There are 39 percent who believe artificial intelligence will hurt the election process, and just 5 percent believe it will help.
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CNN’s Jake Tapper and Dana Bash will moderate the first presidential debate between President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump.
The role is typically meant to be that of a neutral custodian of the conversation between the participants, though Tapper’s long history of harshly criticizing Trump while on the air raises questions about his ability to remain even-handed.
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Shareholders at auto manufacturing giant Ford Motor Co. voted down a proposal Thursday requiring that a report be compiled on the use of child labor in its electric vehicle (EV) line.
The proposal, which was presented by the National Center for Public Policy Research (NCPPR) at Ford’s annual shareholder meeting, called for Ford to report to shareholders the extent to which the company’s EV supply chain involves, depends or relies on child labor outside of the U.S., according to Ford’s proxy statement. The NCPPR called for the report due to the prevalence of child labor in the harvesting of the components used to craft EVs, particularly cobalt, which is commonly sourced from the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC).
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The media is growing weary of President Biden’s avoidance of interviews with journalists, as he has given the fewest of any president in over 40 years.
Mainstream media is noticing that Biden is sitting down for fewer interviews than they are accustomed to presidents giving, which some have speculated is the result of old age and failing memory.
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Scientific American, a top science magazine that has been around since 1845, has become increasingly captured by the political left to the detriment of its scientific goals, a whistleblower told City Journal in a story published Sunday.
While the magazine previously pushed for authors to debate accepted perspectives, it has recently moved toward far-left ideology on issues, such as race, gender and climate, Scientific American author Michael Shermer, who wrote for the outlet from 2001-2019, told City Journal. Shermer, who wrote a column called “Skeptic” for the publication says he faced pushback for writing pieces on progress in reducing discrimination as well as for criticizing the ideology of “intersectionality,” commonly referred to as “identity politics.”
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The preliminary staff report is the result of a months-long investigation into the alleged coercion, where President Joe Biden’s White House reportedly pushed social media platforms such as Facebook, Amazon, and YouTube, to censor books, videos, and posts.
Emails released Wednesday show Facebook officials chafed at the Biden White House pressure campaign to censor reports that the COVID-19 pandemic came from a lab leak in China.
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The lawsuit comes after the New York Times filed their own suit against both companies in December. Authors such as Games of Thrones creator George R. R. Martin, John Grisham, and Jodi Picoult have also sued the companies for copyright infringement.
Eight American newspapers sued OpenAI and Microsoft on Tuesday, for alleged copyright infringement related to their chatbots, which they claim have been stealing millions of copyrighted articles without permission.
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The left-wing Arabella Advisors network has raked in more money than either of the two major political parties and affects almost every element of public policy and elections, argues Scott Walter, president of the Capital Research Center, a Washington-based investigative think tank.
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Democratic strategist James Carville on Sunday mocked young voters who are struggling with whether they will vote for the Democratic Party.
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Two of the federal government’s methods of measuring crime tell two different stories, complicating recent claims from the media and President Joe Biden that crime is declining.
Numerous media outlets have, in recent months, run headlines suggesting that crime is declining across the country. The statistics they’re citing, however, don’t tell the entire story.
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