Biden’s Past Criticism of COVID Travel Plans Boomerangs as He Imposes His Own

President Joe Biden was forced to confront his own past criticisms of travel bans on Friday when he imposed his own travel restrictions on mostly African countries where a new and concerning COVID-19 virus variant has emerged.

Back in 2020, then-candidate Biden derided then-President Donald Trump as ’xenophobic’ and argued travel bans wouldn’t ‘stop’ the pandemic I after the Republican candidate placed restrictions on travel from China and Europe amid the earliest COVID-19 outbreaks.

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Hundreds of Google Employees Sign Letter Opposing Company’s Vaccine Mandate

A group of roughly 600 Google employees signed onto a letter opposing the tech giant’s company-wide vaccination mandate and called for its repeal.

Google first imposed a requirement in July that all of its in-person workers be vaccinated against COVID-19. The company is now asking all of its workers, including those working from home, to upload their vaccination status to the company website by Dec. 3 due to the federal contractor vaccine requirement, according to CNBC.

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Remote Learning Lowered Test Scores in Every State Surveyed, Disproportionately Affected Minorities

Remote learning led to declines in test scores in English and math when compared to the scores of schools that had more in-person learning, according to a paper published by the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER).

Leadership throughout the COVID-19 pandemic forced many schools to close in an effort to prevent the spread of the virus, but many schools remained closed throughout the 2020-2021 school year. According to new research from the NBER, remote learning had a negative impact on students’ test scores in English language arts (ELA) and math in all 12 states studied. Declines in scores were smaller for students who continued in-person learning.

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California’s Gavin Newsom Goes on Vacation to Mexico After Extending ‘State of Emergency’ Order

Gavin Newsom

Just one week after declaring that he would extend a statewide “state of emergency” order, California Governor Gavin Newsom (D-Calif.) left for a vacation to Mexico with his family, as reported by the Daily Caller.

Newsom, his wife Jennifer, and their children left the state on Monday, and will not return until November 28th. On November 15th, Newsom signed another executive order extending numerous restrictions and other “emergency” measures that he first implemented in March of 2020, as the Chinese coronavirus first began to spread in the United States. Under his latest order, the rules and restrictions now will not expire until March of next year, with the added possibility that they may be arbitrarily extended again.

Despite some of the heaviest restrictions in the nation, including mask and vaccine requirements, California continues to see some of the highest rates of COVID-19 cases out of all the other states. In early November, California saw twice as many new cases as Florida, a state with virtually no restrictions remaining.

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Andrew Cuomo Personally Made Changes to Report Downplaying COVID-19 Nursing Home Deaths

Andrew Cuomo

On Monday, an explosive report by the New York State Assembly revealed that former Governor Andrew Cuomo (D-N.Y.) himself made direct edits to the initial report on how many senior citizens died of the Chinese coronavirus in New York nursing homes, as the Daily Caller reports.

The report from the Assembly’s Judiciary Committee is the culmination of an eight-month impeachment investigation against the disgraced former governor. The report says that Cuomo directed the New York Department of Health (DOH) to reduce the total number of fatalities by thousands so as to push back on criticism of Cuomo’s decision in March of 2020 to force COVID-positive patients into nursing homes, which infected and killed thousands of other senior citizens.

The original draft of the report prepared by DOH officials showed over 10,000 total nursing home deaths, but upon Cuomo’s insistence, it was reduced to about 6,500.

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Illinois School Board Association Ends Membership with National School Boards Association over Parent-Threat Letter

The Illinois Association of School Boards voted Thursday to end its membership with the National School Boards Association after the national group sent a letter to President Joe Biden asking for federal intervention to investigate unruly parents who protest at local meetings.

“The decision follows previous attempts by IASB to initiate changes to the governance structure, transparency, and financial oversight of the national association,” a news release from IASB says. “IASB suspended payment of dues to NSBA for 2021-2022 but continued to work to try to bring about needed changes.”

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Fauci Says ‘We Might Modify’ Definition of ‘Fully Vaccinated’ to Include Booster Shots

Dr. Anthony Fauci warned that the definition of “fully vaccinated” might be changed by health officials to include COVID-19 booster shots if the data supports it.

Last week, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommended that everyone aged 18 and older get booster shots six months after receiving either two doses of the Pfizer or Moderna vaccines, or one shot of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine.

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Commentary: Taking Advantage of COVID to Change the Way Americans Vote

Rahm Emanuel, the former mayor of Chicago and chief of staff for President Barack Obama, famously said in 2008 that you should never let “a serious crisis go to waste” because it is “an opportunity to do things that you think you could not do before.” Liberals in 2020 took Emanuel’s political tenet to heart and used the COVID-19 pandemic to try to implement through litigation and executive actions by state government officials the reckless changes in voting and election procedures that they had been wanting for years.

That effort involved voiding basic security protocols on election procedures, including absentee ballots, and pushing for the equivalent of all-mail elections, which would give their activists a free hand in pressuring, coercing, and influencing voters in their homes in ways they are unable to do in polling places. To force these changes, they ended up filing more election-related lawsuits than had ever been filed in an election year in U.S. history. The prior record was almost 200 lawsuits before and after the 2000 election when George W. Bush beat Al Gore; by late October 2020, more than 400 election-related lawsuits had been filed across the nation, the overwhelming majority by the Left.

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Commentary: Parent and School Board Tensions Could Be Eased by School Choice

Young girl in pink long sleeve writing

Public education has been under the microscope lately, especially since many states shut down in-person learning last year during the COVID-19 pandemic. With children learning from home via technology, many parents had the chance to hear what their children’s teachers were saying—and they didn’t always like it. In fact, many were downright disturbed by what public schools were teaching their children.

Parents should not be forced to sit by and watch as their children get indoctrinated with progressive ideas they don’t agree with. Assuming it is legitimate for the government—that is, the taxpayers—to fund education, the government should distribute those funds directly to parents in the form of vouchers and allow them to choose where to educate their children. Not only would this allow for more choice in schools, but it would also reduce much of the conflict we are seeing today between parents and school boards across the country.

A common response to voucher proposals is that they would allow parents to use taxpayer dollars to send their children to private religious schools, thus violating separation of church and state. In other words, atheists and progressives argue that they should not have to financially support schools that teach students religious worldviews.

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FDA Approves Moderna and Pfizer Boosters for Adults

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved Moderna and Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccines for booster shot use for adults in the U.S., the agency announced Friday,

The announcement was made just two months after the FDA first rejected the White House’s plan to administer booster shots to all adults the week of Sept. 20. FDA Acting Commissioner Janet Woodcock approved the booster without holding the usual public meeting to review the data, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) will meet Friday afternoon to discuss the authorization, according to the FDA press release.

“Throughout the course of the COVID-19 pandemic, the FDA has worked to make timely public health decisions as the pandemic evolves. COVID-19 vaccines have proven to be the best and highly effective defense against COVID-19,” Woodcock said in the press release.

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Migrants Are Setting Up Camps Across Mexico, Hoping to be Allowed into the U.S.

Group of tents on a sidewalk; homeless people

New migrant campsites have sprung up around Mexico throughout 2021 as migrants have grown uncertain of whether they’ll be able to remain in the U.S., the Associated Press reported Thursday.

Camps are full of migrants, including many children and those who can’t apply for asylum in the U.S. because of Title 42 restrictions, who have to wait in Mexico as their cases proceed through U.S. immigration courts, according to the AP. Title 42 is a Trump-era public health order implemented in response to the COVID-19 pandemic that prevents some migrants from remaining in the U.S. while seeking asylum and allows border officials to rapidly expel most migrants from the country.

Hundreds of Mexican law enforcement officials raided an encampment in Tijuana and required migrants to register for credentials or evacuate the area on Oct. 28, the AP reported. The migrants who registered and stayed were soon surrounded by a mile of chain-link fence.

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Biden Administration Says It Doesn’t Release Migrants Without Court Dates … Anymore

The Biden administration said it’s no longer releasing migrants into the U.S. without court dates, CNN Politics reported Tuesday.

Migrants will be issued formal notices to appear in an immigration court when released from federal custody instead of notices to report, which direct them to check in with an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) office within 60 days, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said, according to CNN.

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Commentary: False Incentives for Vaccination

Last week, New York Governor Kathy Hochul launched a new program: an incentive to get children ages 5 through 11 to take COVID shots, now that they are available. The program in question has that usual bureaucratic and humorless advertising campaign: “Vaccinate, Educate, Graduate.”

According to the New York State website, “Parents and guardians of children ages 5 through 11 who receive their first vaccine dose by December 19th can enter the State’s incentive program for a chance for their child to win a full scholarship to any two- or four-year SUNY or CUNY college or university; the scholarship includes tuition, room, and board. Ten winners will be announced each week beginning November 24th, with a total of 50 winners being selected over the five-week period.”

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National School Boards Association Removes Letter Comparing Parents to Domestic Terrorists from Its Website

The National School Boards Association scrubbed its letter, which compared the actions of concerned parents at school board meetings to those of domestic terrorists, from its website.

The deleted National School Boards Association (NSBA) letter, addressed to President Joe Biden’s administration, sparked outrage and backlash from parents across the country for requesting federal government intervention. The letter suggested the use of statutes, such as the USA PATRIOT Act, to stop threats or violence directed toward school board members over actions that it said could be “the equivalent to a form of domestic terrorism and hate crimes,” according to the Sept. 29. letter.

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OSHA Suspends Vaccine Mandate After Emergency Temporary Standard Struck Down by Court

After The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled Friday to keep its stay of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration’s (OSHA) emergency rule that would require employers of more than 100 employees to mandate COVID-19 vaccines in place, the federal agency says that it will no longer pursue private sector vaccine mandates at this time. 

“On November 12, 2021, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit granted a motion to stay OSHA’s COVID-19 Vaccination and Testing Emergency Temporary Standard, published on November 5, 2021 (86 Fed. Reg. 61402) (“ETS”),” OSHA said in a statement. “The court ordered that OSHA ‘take no steps to implement or enforce’ the ETS ‘until further court order.’ While OSHA remains confident in its authority to protect workers in emergencies, OSHA has suspended activities related to the implementation and enforcement of the ETS pending future developments in the litigation.”

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Biden Loses Legal Battle, COVID Confidence as Vaccine Mandate Stalls

President Joe Biden is struggling to win in court as well as the court of public opinion when it comes to his response to COVID-19.

Biden’s approval rating on his handling of the pandemic has steadily dropped as he has issued more vaccine mandates, with one of those mandates seemingly dead in the water.

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Federally Funded Non-Profits Are Running Illegal Immigrant Processing Centers in Nice Hotels, Helping Migrants Avoid Arrest

The Biden administration has deputized non-profit groups to move illegal migrants across the nation, allowing the charities to put them up in nice hotels and give them instructions on how to avoid capture.

Rep. Lance Gooden (R-Texas) said Monday that a whistleblower told him about an ongoing operation in San Diego, and decided to go there to see for himself what is going on.

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Retail Sales Grew in October as Shoppers Faced Higher Prices Entering the Holiday Season

U.S. retail sales increased in October as shoppers faced the largest price increase in 30 years entering the holiday season.

Retail sales, a measure of how much consumers spent on goods, increased 1.7% in October, far exceeding September’s 0.7% figure, the U.S. Census Bureau reported Tuesday. Core sales, excluding autos, jumped 1.7% in October.

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Ric Grenell and Gloria Romero Commentary: A Plan to Deliver Equal Opportunity to Every Student in California

Group of young students working in classroom

When students are armed with a world class education, they can break down barriers and achieve their deepest dreams. However, in America today, big government and big unions are preventing students from receiving a quality education by forcing American kids to attend the school closest to them, even when it is totally failing. There is no school competition for kids who can’t afford to opt-out of the shoddy school they are forced to attend. This policy and practice especially impacts poor and minority children. But in our home state of California, we’ve had enough of failing government monopolies. We are launching a ballot initiative that will deliver educational freedom to every child in the state, regardless of where they live or how much income their parents earn.

We have all seen government schools that transition from safe havens for learning and hope into depressing institutions that fall short of educating tomorrow’s leaders. Parents are mad, taxpayers are frustrated, and our teachers are not supported by their union bosses. Nowhere is that reality truer than in states where big unions—like the California Teachers Association—control political decision makers with massive campaign war chests seized from their members’ obligatory dues. That’s why Fix California has launched a project to put a ballot initiative in front of voters in 2022—to emancipate students from the government monopoly on education.

Currently, in California, residents are taxed exorbitantly at every turn, with the ruling party’s promise that those dollars will ostensibly be spent on improving the state. That’s a lie on many fronts, but it’s especially untrue in education where failing government schools continue to be rewarded by more tax dollars and virtually no accountability. Tax dollars are siphoned off in the form of required union dues and are funneled straight into the coffers of corrupt unions financing campaigns of politicians who ensure the gravy train keeps flowing. It is a crooked cycle that has destroyed government education across the country.

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Energy Secretary Granholm Says Biden Is ‘All Over’ Gas Prices, But Can’t List Any Policies to Lower Prices

Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm said President Joe Biden is “all over” rising gasoline prices but failed to name a single administration policy aimed at lowering energy costs.

“The president is all over this,” Granholm said during a CNN interview Monday. “He really is very concerned about, you know, inflation, obviously, and the price of gasoline because that’s the most obvious manifestation of it. As you know, no president controls the price of gas, oil is sold on a global market.”

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Wyoming Governor Signs Bill Funding Legal Defense Against Federal Vaccine Mandate Challenges

Mark Gordon

Wyoming Gov. Mark Gordon on Friday signed legislation prohibiting public entities from enforcing the federal government’s COVID-19 vaccine mandates.

House Bill 1002, which was the only piece of legislation passed during the Wyoming Legislature’s special session, also provides $4 million in funding for any legal challenges against federal vaccine mandates.

“No public entity shall enforce any mandate or standard of the federal government, whether emergency, temporary or permanent, that requires an employer to ensure or mandate that an employee shall receive a COVID‑19 vaccination,” the bill reads.

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Fifth Circuit: Challenge to Biden Vaccine Mandate ‘Virtually Certain to Succeed’ Based on Constitution and Law

woman with a hard hat and safety glasses on

The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled on Friday to keep its stay of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration’s (OSHA) emergency rule that would require employers of more than 100 employees to mandate COVID-19 vaccines in place, determining that the private businesses challenging the rule were “very likely to win” their case.

The case is BST Holdings v. OSHA, No. 21-60845. BST Holdings, along with a host of other companies and several states, including Louisiana, Texas, South Carolina, Mississippi and Utah, sued President Joe Biden’s OSHA to halt the vaccine mandate.

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Commentary: I am Challenging the Vaccine Mandate to Protect My Workers’ Jobs

Blue Collar Worker

The Biden administration has finally published its anticipated ultimatum threatening companies like mine with severe fines and penalties for not firing any employee who declines to be vaccinated against or submit to invasive weekly testing for COVID-19. The new rule promulgated by the U.S. Labor Department’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) under the guise of workplace safety may well bankrupt the business my father founded. So, as the CEO of the Phillips Manufacturing & Tower Company, I am joining with The Buckeye Institute to challenge OSHA’s vaccine mandate in court. Here’s why.

Phillips is a 54-year-old company based in Shelby, Ohio, that manufactures specialty welded steel tubing for automotive, appliance, and construction industries. OSHA’s emergency rule applies to companies with 100 or more employees — at our Shelby Welded Tube facility, we employ 104 people. As a family-owned business I take the health of my workers seriously — they are my neighbors and my friends. When I heard of the mandate, we conducted a survey of our workers to see what the impacts would be. It revealed that 28 Phillips employees are fully vaccinated, while antibody testing conducted at company expense found that another 16 employees have tested positive for COVID-19 antibodies and likely possess natural immunity. At least 47 employees have indicated that they have not and will not be vaccinated. Seventeen of those 47 unvaccinated workers said that they would quit or be fired before complying with the vaccine or testing mandate. Those are 17 skilled workers that Phillips cannot afford to lose.

Perhaps the Biden administration remains unaware of the labor shortage currently plaguing the U.S. labor market generally and industrial manufacturing especially. Like many companies, Phillips is already understaffed, with seven job openings we have been unable to fill. Employees already work overtime to keep pace with customer demand, working 10-hour shifts, six days a week on average. Firing 17 veteran members of the Phillips team certainly won’t help.

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Gates Calls for ‘New Way of Doing’ Vaccines Since They Don’t ‘Block Transmission’ of COVID

Bill Gates

Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates has called for a “new way of doing the vaccines” against viruses like COVID-19 given that they do not “block” transmission.

Gates said the “economic damage” and death toll from COVID-19 was “completely horrific.”

Gates expects the world’s experience with COVID-19 to lead to larger research and development budgets to better prepare for a future pandemic.

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Lawsuits Challenging Biden’s Vaccine Mandates Mount, Likely Heading to U.S. Supreme Court

Multiple lawsuits have been filed against the Biden administration over three different vaccine mandates targeting private employees, federal employees and healthcare workers serving Medicare and Medicaid patients.

But lawsuits filed by 27 states over the private sector mandate is setting the stage for the U.S. Supreme Court to weigh in because they were filed directly in five federal courts of appeals.

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The CDC Can’t Prove a Single Instance of a Naturally Immune Individual Spreading COVID

In response to a law firm’s query, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) was unable to provide a single instance in which an unvaccinated person who’d previously had COVID-19 became reinfected with and transmitted the virus to someone else. The CDC said it does not collect such data, even though the medical freedom of millions of Americans hang in the balance.

A record 4.4 million Americans quit their jobs in September, many of them pushed out of the workforce by the unnecessary vaccine mandates.

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Commentary: Dr. Fauci Warned About Coronaviruses in 2003 – But Didn’t Act on It

Dr. Anthony Fauci

Few would argue the United States, or any country for that matter, was prepared for the COVID-19 pandemic, even though, starting in 2003, the U.S. devoted $5.6 billion to fund Project Bioshield, running through 2013, and another $2.8 billion of funding through 2018. Project Bioshield was designed to prepare the United States against a bio attack, including provisions for the stockpiling and distribution of vaccines.

Though Covid-19 was a new virus, congressional testimony from 2003 paints a concerning picture about what we knew – and when – about the family of viruses from which it originated.

“I am particularly interested in learning how Project BioShield would assist in addressing the current public health emergency created by the epidemic known as Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome [SARS],” said Tom Davis, chairman of the Committee on Government Reform. “More than 2,000 suspected cases of this mysterious disease have been reported in 17 nations, including the United States, with 78 fatalities. So far, there is no effective treatment or vaccine to combat this deadly syndrome.”

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Commentary: Six Ways the CDC Failed During the Coronavirus Pandemic

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is the national public health agency of the United States, so it made sense that during a once-in-a-century pandemic the agency would be given a leading role. With that leadership, however, came limelight. And in so many ways during the COVID-19 pandemic, the CDC, under the spotlight, undeniably flopped.

In his recently published book, Uncontrolled Spread: Why COVID-19 Crushed Us and How We Can Defeat the Next Pandemic, former FDA commissioner Scott Gottlieb critiqued numerous aspects of the worldwide response to COVID-19. Many CDC actions garnered forceful rebukes. While Gottlieb recognizes that a lot of talented, smart, and dedicated individuals work within the CDC, he says it’s hard to deny that the respected governmental agency failed in a lot of vital respects. Here are six of them:

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Commentary: History Will Grind Out the Truth

“History will figure that out on its own.” That is what Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) recently replied to Dr. Anthony Fauci, head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.  

In a heated congressional exchange, Fauci derided the idea that the COVID-19 pandemic was due to the leak of a dangerous virus, engineered in the Chinese Wuhan virology lab—and in part funded by U.S. health agencies, on the prompt of Fauci himself.  

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Commentary: Dear Policymakers, Homeschooling Is Here to Stay

Homeschooling is here to stay and the time has come for policymakers to acknowledge that fact. After years of increasing at a rate of about 3 percent a year, the number of parents choosing to homeschool their children has spiked, triggered by the COVID-19 pandemic.

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the portion of children being homeschooled doubled from 5.4 percent during the 2019-20 school year to 11 percent in 2020-21. Among Black families, homeschooling jumped nearly five-fold during that time, from 3.3 percent to 16.1 percent.

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Federal Workers with Natural Immunity to COVID-19 Sue Biden Administration over Vaccine Mandate

President Joe Biden talks to Veterans and VA staff members during a briefing on the vaccine process Monday, March 8, 2021, at the Washington DC Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Washington, D.C.

Federal workers with naturally acquired immunity to COVID-19 filed a class-action lawsuit Monday against the federal government over the Biden administration’s mandate that all federal workers be vaccinated against it as a condition of employment. The mandate doesn’t allow for exemptions for religious or other reasons, including having natural immunity.

The lawsuit was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas by the New Civil Liberties Alliance, a nonpartisan, nonprofit civil liberties group, and the Texas Public Policy Foundation on behalf of 11 individuals.

Those named in the lawsuit include Dr. Anthony Fauci, Chief COVID Response Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, and over 20 officials including cabinet heads, as well as several task forces and several federal agencies. They include the U.S. surgeon general, director of CDC and OPM, the secretaries of the departments of Veteran’s Affairs, FEMA, FPS, OMB, Secret Service, USGA, among others.

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Virginia Employment Commission Making Some Progress, but Still Has Serious Institutional Problems

The Virginia Employment Commission (VEC) is starting to recover from over a year of unemployment insurance (UI) backlogs and call wait times brought on by unprecedented demand during COVID-19, according to a final report from the Joint Legislative Audit and Review Commission (JLARC.) But the VEC crisis highlighted long-term systemic problems in the agency, and the agency still has a long way to go.

“As you’ll hear, some backlogs have been reduced, and call center performance has been improved somewhat, but there are increasing backlogs in other areas. There remain substantial challenges for the agency in the coming weeks, months, and even years,” JLARC Director Hal Greer told legislators on Monday.

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‘Propaganda’: Experts Rip CDC Study Claiming Vax Offers Stronger Protection than Natural Immunity

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention published an “early release” study last week that uses a highly curated population to purportedly show that mRNA-vaccinated people have a much lower rate of reinfection by COVID-19 than naturally immune people, contradicting a much larger Israeli study this summer.

The CDC study concludes: “All eligible persons should be vaccinated against COVID-19 as soon as possible, including unvaccinated persons previously infected with SARS-CoV-2.”

The study analyzed “COVID-19–like illness hospitalizations among adults” across nine states from January through Sept. 2. Because public health authorities portrayed vaccination as the best way to avoid hospitalization, it’s less likely that vaccinated people would seek hospitalization, thus hiding their breakthrough infections relative to the naturally immune.

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ANALYSIS: PolitiFact and Facebook Spread Gravely Dangerous Falsehood About the COVID-19 Survival Rate

In a PolitiFact article titled “Why the COVID-19 Survival Rate Is Not Over 99%,” staff writer Jason Asenso argues that about 1.7% of U.S. residents who contract COVID-19 die from it. However, he uses a naive approach to calculate this figure, and legitimate methods show that the average COVID-19 survival rate is firmly over 99%.

Medical journals have documented the deadly harms of exaggerating the fatality rate of COVID-19. Nevertheless, Facebook is amplifying PolitiFact’s false claim by using it to censor genuine facts about this issue.

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Addiction-Based Mental Health Crisis Still Getting Worse in Virginia

During the beginning of COVID-19, hospital inpatient volume and emergency department visits decreased, in part due to people postponing treatment. But the same data showed an increase in the number of patients getting treatment for alcohol, drug use, and related mental disorders, the Virginia Hospital and Healthcare Association (VHHA) reported in April. In a Friday press conference, VHHA Vice President of Data and Analytics David Vaamonde reported that increased treatment for those kinds of disorders continued into the first two quarters of 2021 — one of only two Major Diagnostic Categories (MDCs) that saw growth since the beginning of the pandemic.

“We’re looking at MDCs where volumes actually increased since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. We have alcohol and drug use, and drug induced organic mental health disorders, obviously a very concerning trend there, and then diseases and disorders of the respiratory system and infectious and parasitic diseases,” Vaamonde said, adding that the respiratory, infectious, and parasitic categories line up with what a COVID-19 patient would have.

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Commentary: Financial Stability Is Key to Being Able to Leave Job for Refusing Vaccine Mandate

Joshua Mawhorter

Until recently, I was a California teacher working in two charter schools, one as a full-time classroom teacher of Government/Economics and sometimes U.S. History, and the other as a part-time independent study teacher who assists families with a program primarily based around homeschooling. I have taught for about five years and love teaching.

Last week, I was fired from one school and put on unpaid administrative leave at the other because of my refusal either to take and demonstrate proof of the COVID-19 vaccine or test weekly. I even filed a religious exemption stating the following that was rejected:

“As a committed follower of Christ, I religiously and philosophically cannot submit to either a government vaccine mandate or weekly testing.

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Coronavirus Is Fading as the Top Issue on Americans’ Minds, Polls Show

COVID-19 is taking a back seat when it comes to the economy, education and more, recent polls show.

In a new Reuters/Ipsos poll, only about 12% of American adults surveyed said they would list public health issues, which include COVID-19, as a top priority, below economic issues like the job market and inflation. The poll also showed 73% of respondents saying political leaders should focus on growing jobs and the economy and two-thirds of voters, including a majority of both Republicans and Democrats, agreeing that “inflation is a very big concern for me.”

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Commentary: Our Vaccine Status Is None of Their Business

Vaccination card

I stand with all my fellow Americans—both vaccinated and unvaccinated. And because I do, I recently refused to disclose my vaccination status. And you should, too.

I was invited to speak at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth School of Law about the many public and private mandates enacted, supposedly, to address COVID-19—all of which I oppose. I view vaccine mandates, for example, as the most totalitarian commands we have seen in this country since the days of eugenics-based forced sterilization—leading science, at the time.

Ironically, one week before my scheduled speech, I was told that school bureaucrats mandated off-campus visitors like me confirm they are vaccinated. Many will say that sharing this private health information is a minor intrusion with little downside. I think that’s a mistake.

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Texas Sen. Cruz Introduces Bill Prohibiting Vaccine Mandate for Minors

Ted Cruz

U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, introduced legislation that would prohibit the federal government and any entity at the federal, state and local level that receives federal funding, including school districts, from requiring COVID-19 vaccines for minors.

“Parents should have the right to decide what is best for their children in consultation with their family doctor,” he said. “My view on the COVID-19 vaccine has remained clear: no mandates of any kind.

“President [Joe] Biden and his administration have repeatedly ignored medical privacy rights and personal liberty by pushing unlawful and burdensome vaccine mandates on American businesses, and now they are preparing to push a mandate on kids by pressuring parents – all without taking into account relative risk or the benefits of natural immunity.”

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Private Payrolls Added 571,000 Jobs in October as Hiring Heats Up

Private firms’ payrolls increased by 571,000 in October, far exceeding experts’ expectations as hiring throughout the country heats up, according to a major employment report.

The 571,000 jobs added is a slight increase from the 523,000 jobs added in September, the ADP National Employment Report showed. The Dow Jones estimate predicted companies would add 395,000 jobs in October, CNBC reported.

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Biden Approval Rating Falls to 42 Percent

President Joe Biden’s approval rating has fallen to 42%, according to a new NBC News poll; his disapproval rating hit 54%, up 6 points from August.

The majority polled, 71%, including nearly half of registered Democrats, say the country is headed in the wrong direction. Republicans and Independents say the country is headed in the wrong direction, 93% and 70%, respectively, with 48% of Democrats saying the same.

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Facebook to Shut Down Facial Recognition System, Delete Scans of One Billion People

Facebook announced Tuesday it was shutting down its Face Recognition system and deleting the scans of over one billion people’s faces.

Jerome Pesenti, vice president of artificial intelligence at Facebook, announced the changes in a blog post Tuesday, citing the technology’s possible negative effects as well as regulatory uncertainty as reasons behind the decision.

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Fauci Staffers Flagged Potential Gain-of-Function Research at Wuhan Lab in 2016, Records Reveal

Anthony Fauci

Two subordinates of Dr. Anthony Fauci raised concerns in May 2016 that a taxpayer-funded grant may include gain-of-function experiments on bat coronaviruses at a Wuhan lab, but dropped the issue after nonprofit group EcoHealth Alliance downplayed the concerns, documents obtained by the Daily Caller News Foundation show.

National Institutes of Allergies and Infectious Disease staffers Jenny Greer and Erik Stemmy told EcoHealth in a May 28, 2016, letter that a proposed grant “may include” gain of function research, according to documents obtained through a White Coat Waste Project information request. The letter requested EcoHealth provide its own “determination” as to whether its proposed experiments in Wuhan included gain of function research.

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Opponents of CRT, COVID Closures Win School Board Races Nationwide

Early returns Tuesday night showed that critics of COVID-19 reopening policies and critical race theory made headway in school board elections nationwide.

Conservatives now have a majority of the Carroll Independent School District in the wealthy Dallas suburb of Southlake, where parents previously led an electoral revolt against a proposed racial equity curriculum this spring.

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REVIEW: Hemingway’s ‘Rigged’ a Bone Chilling Page-Turner into the 2020 Election

Person with mask on at a computer.

We are a year overdue for the true story of the 2020 elections. Mollie Hemingway has at last delivered it to us in one tidy volume.

It’s a complex story, which makes for a weighty book. The research is thorough, the writing is evidentiary, the style is clinical—like investigative journalism and social science used to be. The endnotes alone run nearly 100 pages. 

Reading Rigged, one isn’t jarred by hyperbole, conjecture, or spin. Hemingway is unequivocal on progressive malice, yet she can be scathing of Republicans, too. She is particularly critical of Rudy Giuliani’s attempts to publicize fraud nationally, thereby undermining prior case-by-case efforts to get particular state courts to recognize particular violations of particular state laws. 

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European Economies Grew Faster Than U.S. As Inflation and Supply Chain Delays Crippled the Country

European economic growth outpaced the U.S. and China as COVID-19 restrictions eased and vaccination rates increased, but supply chain disruptions and inflating prices will hold back expansion in the near future, The Wall Street Journal reported Friday.

Gross domestic product in the eurozone increased at a seasonally adjusted annualized rate of 9.1% in the quarter ending in September, according to the WSJ.  In comparison, the U.S. economy grew at a 2% rate and China grew at just 1%.

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Commentary: The Democratization of Information Threatens the Left

Man on phone, looking at desktop computer

With the democratization of information, we are witnessing an immensely beneficial development for every American. This development is best recognized by the fascistic attempts of Big Tech, the Pravda media, and the Biden Administration to destroy it.

As many have noted, social media has empowered individuals to pursue their happiness and shape their destinies to an extent unimagined in human history. While many are more familiar with the economic and social aspects of the internet (hence, the term “social media”), it is the political dimension that most frightens the Left.

Given their perpetually failed, morally bankrupt, coercive agenda, the democratization of information is an existential threat for the Left and to its psychotic aim to “fundamentally transform” the most prosperous, powerful, and equitable nation ever known.

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Supreme Court Rejects Appeal by Maine Healthcare Workers Challenging Vaccine Mandate

Healthcare workers

The Supreme Court on Friday rejected an emergency appeal from Maine healthcare workers attempting to block the state’s vaccine mandate.

The group of unvaccinated workers argued that the law violated their First Amendment rights because the law doesn’t have a religious exemption.

According to the Associated Press, Maine is one of three states including New York and Rhode Island that have vaccine mandates that lack religious exemptions for healthcare workers.

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Migrants Sleep Outside Immigration Offices to Check in with Immigration and Customs Enforcement

Migrants are sleeping outside immigration offices waiting to check in with Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials, the Houston Chronicle reported on Friday.

Migrants started spending the night outside the Greenspoint Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) office in Houston, Texas, so they would be guaranteed an appointment the next day, according to the Chronicle. Around a dozen migrants from Central America and Venezuela set up camping chairs or decided to sleep in their cars on Thursday.

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COVID Mandates Oust Police Officers Nationwide, Police Leaders Warn of Fallout

Back of Police officers uniform

COVID-19 vaccine mandates have sparked nationwide controversy and led to firings and resignations around the country. Police officers have been hit hard by the requirements, and their exodus may leave many cities understaffed even on the heels of a spike in violent crime.

In New York City, officers passed the mayor’s deadline for vaccination Friday. The city announced that there are 26,000 unvaccinated municipal workers, including 17% of police officers. Those who refuse to comply will be placed on unpaid leave beginning Monday.

But New York City is far from the only local government to take that route. Several municipalities have instituted vaccine mandates for police officers only to see a significant drop-off in staffing.

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