Commentary: America’s Priorities Need to Change in Order to Protect Its Citizens

Illegal Immigrants

The horrific murder of Laken Riley by a repeated felony offender and illegal alien Jose Ibarra, 26, a Venezuelan citizen, was preventable—had federal immigration laws simply been enforced by the Biden administration.

When called out in his recent State of the Union address, President Biden referenced the deceased Ms. Riley. But Biden misidentified her as “Lincoln Riley”—the USC football coach!

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Boeing Reports New Problem with 737 Fuselage

Alaska Airlines' Boeing 737

Boeing has discovered additional problems with its 737 fuselages, following a fuselage panel on one of its 737 Max 9s becoming detached last month during an Alaska Airlines flight.

The international aircraft maker said Sunday the new problem is related to drilled holes in the fuselage that were discovered by a supplier employee but is not an “immediate flight-safety issue.”

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United Airlines CEO Says They Are Making Plans Without Boeing After Manufacturing Issues

United Boeing

United Airlines CEO Scott Kirby said Tuesday that the company is making a plan to move forward without Boeing after the manufacturing company grounded its MAX 9 planes, according to CNBC.

Boeing has suffered a series of problems in the last several weeks after multiple planes had major mechanical and structural errors, forcing the company to ground all Max 9 aircraft with door plugs. Kirby told CNBC that the decision to ground the aircraft was the “straw that broke the camel’s back” for United.

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Commentary: The U.S. Defense Industrial Base

The Russian invasion of Ukraine, along with increased tensions in the Middle East and the Indo-Pacific region, has generated many debates. Debates about the stability of the international order, the cohesion of NATO, and many others. But for the United States, one significant debate regards the size and expansibility of the American defense industrial base. It’s a discussion that is well past due.

Last year, Under Secretary of Defense Colin Kahl testified to Congress that, “What the Ukraine conflict showed is that, frankly, our defense industrial base was not at the level that we needed it to be to generate munitions.” But the challenge with ammunition is more symptom than cause, in economic terms something of a “leading indicator.”

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Youngkin Nixes Ford Battery Plant Over Partnership with Chinese Company

Governor Glenn Youngkin blocked Virginia from consideration for a battery plant to supply Ford Motor Company amid concerns about the technology supplied by a Chinese company, he told reporters on Wednesday.

In a press gaggle, Youngkin criticized a clean energy push that relied on technology “owned and dominated by the Chinese.”

“Well, we in fact felt that the recent efforts to put forward a Ford plant that would house Chinese technology to build the batteries was in fact representative of that. And that we felt the right thing to do was to not recruit Ford as a front for China to America. Let’s develop our own technology,” Youngkin said after his State of the Commonwealth speech.

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Site Selection Magazine: Virginia Top State for Business Climate

Site Selection Magazine says Virginia is the top state in its business climate ranking, beating out Georgia, Texas, North Carolina, and Arizona for the top spot. Although the commonwealth only ranked 11th in a survey of executives, one of the indicators in the index, it performed well in the other…

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Virginia Finished Fiscal Year 2022 with $1.94 Billion Surplus

Virginia’s Fiscal Year 2022 General Fund revenues finished with a $1.94 billion surplus, after finishing Fiscal Year 2021 with a $2.6 billion surplus, the largest in Virginia’s history.

“While I am pleased that our additional revenue can be reinvested in Virginia, the Commonwealth’s general fund revenue surplus confirms that Virginians have been overtaxed for way too long,” Governor Glenn Youngkin said in a Thursday evening announcement of the 2022 surplus.

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Youngkin, Kaine, Warner, and Beyer Celebrate Boeing’s Relocating Global Headquarters to Virginia, Partnership with Virginia Tech

Governor Glenn Youngkin, Senators Tim Kaine (D-VA) and Mark Warner (D-VA), and Representative Don Beyer (D-VA-08) spoke at a Monday ceremony celebrating Boeing’s relocating its headquarters to Arlington and its partnership with Virginia Tech’s Innovation Campus in Arlington.

Youngkin said that when Boeing announced its move to Virginia in May, “I was particularly proud because when we went to work on January 15, we talked about Virginia being open for business. We talked about Virginia raising standards and expectations and education. We talked about Virginia being the best place for our veterans to live and work and raise a family.”

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Raytheon Moving Headquarters to Virginia

Raytheon Technologies is moving its global headquarters to Arlington, Virginia, the company announced Tuesday.

“The location increases agility in supporting U.S. government and commercial aerospace customers and serves to reinforce partnerships that will progress innovative technologies to advance the industry. Washington, D.C. serves as a convenient travel hub for the company’s global customers and employees,” a press release states.

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After Bad Fiscal Year 2022 First Quarter Report Boeing Announces Plan to Move Headquarters to Arlington

Boeing is moving its global headquarters to its campus in Arlington, and plans to develop a research and technology center to focus on areas including cyber security, autonomous operations, and software and systems engineering.

“We are excited to build on our foundation here in Northern Virginia. The region makes strategic sense for our global headquarters given its proximity to our customers and stakeholders, and its access to world-class engineering and technical talent,” Boeing CEO Dave Calhoun said in the Thursday announcement.

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Problems Continue for Boeing With 787s and 737 MAXes

The Federal Aviation Administration on Tuesday announced it would retain sole authority to issue airworthiness certificates and perform any final inspections on Boeing’s 787 Dreamliner aircraft.

Meanwhile, two members of Congress, including Rep. Rick Larsen, D-Everett, have asked for an investigation into why the FAA decided not to penalize Boeing for fatal crashes involving its 737 MAX.

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Boeing Suspends Vaccine Mandate for Employees

Boeing Friday said it has suspended its requirement that U.S.-based employees be fully vaccinated or face losing their jobs.

The announcement comes as several attempts by President Joe Biden to require vaccinations for workers in various settings have been blocked by courts in recent weeks.

“Boeing is committed to maintaining a safe working environment for our customers, and advancing the health and safety of our global workforce,” a company spokesperson told KOMO News. “As such, we continue to encourage our employees to get vaccinated and get a booster if they have not done so. Meanwhile, after careful review, Boeing has suspended its vaccine requirement in line with a federal court’s decision prohibiting the enforcement of the federal contractor executive order and a number of state laws.”

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Boeing Suspends Vaccine Mandate for Employees

Boeing Friday said it has suspended its requirement that U.S.-based employees be fully vaccinated or face losing their jobs.

The announcement comes as several attempts by President Joe Biden to require vaccinations for workers in various settings have been blocked by courts in recent weeks.

“Boeing is committed to maintaining a safe working environment for our customers, and advancing the health and safety of our global workforce,” a company spokesperson told KOMO News. “As such, we continue to encourage our employees to get vaccinated and get a booster if they have not done so. Meanwhile, after careful review, Boeing has suspended its vaccine requirement in line with a federal court’s decision prohibiting the enforcement of the federal contractor executive order and a number of state laws.”

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Biden’s Air Force Opens Strategic Tanker Contract to Airbus Less Than a Year After $4B DOJ Sanction for Hiding China Ties

President Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s administration opened up a significant chunk of a new Air Force tanker contract to the Leiden, Netherlands, based Airbus less than a year after the company paid a nearly $4 billion fine for corruption and despite its history of technology transfers to China.

“Airbus engaged in a multi-year and massive scheme to corruptly enhance its business interests by paying bribes in China and other countries and concealing those bribes,” said Assistant Attorney General Brian A. Benczkowski of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division in a statement released at the end of January.

“This coordinated resolution was possible thanks to the dedicated efforts of our foreign partners at the Serious Fraud Office in the United Kingdom and the PNF in France,” Benczkowski said.

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Boeing Cuts Thousands of Jobs, Prepares for Air Travel Slow Down Amidst Coronavirus Surge

American aerospace giant Boeing announced a fresh round of job cuts during its earnings call on Wednesday morning as coronavirus cases continued to surge worldwide.

Boeing said it would cut 7,000 jobs by the end of 2021, according to The Wall Street Journal. The job cut, the latest in a series of coronavirus-related cuts, would take the company to 130,000 employees after starting 2020 with 160,000.

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Boeing Says Pandemic Will Cut Demand for Planes for a Decade

Boeing is lowering its expectations around demand for new planes over the next decade as the coronavirus pandemic continues to undercut air travel.

The company on Tuesday predicted that the world will need 18,350 new commercial airplanes in the next decade, a drop of 11% from its 2019 forecast. The value of that market will slide by about $200 billion from last year’s forecast, to $2.9 trillion.

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