Tag: Los Angeles

Catholic Health Care System Partners with Pro-Abortion Virtual Women’s Health Clinic

The Daily Signal

The Catholic health care system CommonSpirit partners with an online women’s health clinic that offers abortion pills and referrals for surgical abortions.

CommonSpirit Health announced in 2021 it would partner with Ask Tia to create “a new front door to health care for women.” The partnership, uncovered by the pro-life organization Save the Storks, “enables the two health care leaders to launch Tia-branded women’s health clinics together that will provide comprehensive, blended virtual and in-person care.”

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Nearly Half of Los Angeles’ Homeless Budget Wasn’t Spent: Report

Daily Caller News Foundation
Homeless Person

Nearly half of Los Angeles, California’s $1.3 billion homelessness budget for fiscal year 2023-2024 wasn’t spent, according to the city Controller’s report.

Los Angeles City Controller Kenneth Mejia discovered that only $599 million had been spent, with an additional $195 million marked to be spent, and $512,690,810 million not marked for anything, according to the report. Recently, Los Angeles residents seem poised to approve Measure A, which would add a .5% county-level sales tax, with revenues going towards homeless programs, according to the unofficial election results count.

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Group: $1 Million Offer Still Stands for ‘Queers for Palestine’ to Host Parade in Gaza

The College Fix
Queers for Palestine march

A watchdog group parked mobile billboards at two universities last week, offering one million dollars to fund a pride parade in Gaza or the West Bank for any pro-Palestinian organization willing to organize it. No one has taken up their offer yet.

New Tolerance Campaign has advertised the “$1,000,000 Gay Pride Parade Challenge” at the University of California, Los Angeles, Columbia University, and the Human Rights Campaign headquarters since September 16.

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Twice the Number of ICE Detainers Issued Under Trump than Biden, Analysis Reveals

The Center Square
Suspected Illegal Border Crossers

Twice the number of detainers were issued for criminal illegal foreign nationals under the Trump administration than the Biden administration, according to a new analysis of federal data published by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC). The nonprofit data research center is affiliated with the Newhouse School of Public Communications and Whitman School of Management at Syracuse University.

Detainers are issued by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), otherwise known as “immigration holds,” to apprehend and detain often violent individuals wanted for a crime in another country, arrested or convicted of one in the U.S., or placed in removal proceedings by a federal immigration judge.

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Commentary: American Schools Are a Big Reason Our Children Are Unwell

Virginia Star Staff
High School students

With “Teacher Appreciation Week” now behind us, it’s crucial that we pay close heed to the well-being of the students, and the news is not good. Gen Z-ers and the newest crop—Generation Alpha—are struggling, and schools are the focal point of the problem.

A new report from Gallup and the Walton Family Foundation surveyed more than 1,000 Gen Z students between the ages of 12 and 18 and found that just 48 percent of those enrolled in middle or high school felt motivated to go to school. Only half said they do something interesting in school every day. On a similar note, a new EdChoice survey reveals that 64 percent of teens said that school is boring, and 30 percent feel that it is a waste of time.

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Antisemitism in Public K-12 Schools Spotlights Activist Teachers and Radicalized Students

Just the News
Kids in a classroom

Prominent acts of antisemitism at K-12 schools nationwide since the Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel are raising questions about what students may have been learning before the Hamas attack that could have sparked such a quick radicalization.

School “walkouts” with praises of Hamas, student shouts of “F*** the Jews,”  and teacher-led bullying of Jewish students have been reported at Berkeley Unified School District in California. On the other side of the country, the New York City Education Department has also been hit with massive walkouts and is facing a lawsuit from Jewish teachers who say they were subjected to severe, repetitive acts of antisemitism that were perpetrated by students and ignored by other faculty members. Meanwhile, Maryland’s Montgomery County School District, which borders Washington, D.C., has been accused of repeatedly failing to punish antisemitic student behavior.

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Los Angeles Private School Forced to Close Due to Homelessness and Drug Use

Virginia Star Staff
Academy of Media Arts

A private school in Los Angeles was forced to close due to rising safety concerns as a result of the homeless and drug-abusing population in the vicinity.

As Fox News reports, the circumstances of the closure are detailed in a lawsuit filed by Dana Hammond, the founder of the Academy of Media Arts. Hammond claims that the city’s failure to adequately protect the school from vagrants constituted a breach of contract with the building that hosted the school.

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Texas Transports over 100,000 Foreign Nationals to ‘Sanctuary Cities’

The Center Square

Since April 2022, more than 100,000 foreign nationals who have illegally crossed the border have been bused or flown from Texas to six sanctuary cities. This equates to roughly 5 percent of those who illegally entered Texas in fiscal 2023 alone, the highest number on record, The Center Square exclusively reported.

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Anti-Israel Protestor Allegedly Beats 69-Year-Old Man to Death with Bullhorn

Peter D'Abrosca

A pro-Israeli protestor from Thousand Oaks has died after a pro-Palestinian protestor allegedly hit him over the head with a bullhorn during a clash between the two groups Sunday. 

Ynet News confirmed that Paul Kessler, 69, died of internal bleeding after the blow to the head. 

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Mayors of Five Major Cities Demand Meeting with Biden over Mass Migration Crisis

Virginia Star Staff

The mayors of five of the biggest cities in the United States are demanding a meeting with Joe Biden to discuss the mass migration crisis, as theirs and other major cities continue to be overrun with hordes of third-world illegal aliens.

Politico reports that the mayors of New York City, Los Angeles, Chicago, Houston, and Denver have been pressing for a meeting in order to address the lack of support from the federal government, which has led to a strain on city resources. The five mayors, who are all Democrats, sent a letter to the Biden Administration which was obtained by the Associated Press on Wednesday.

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Governments Across America Spend Millions to Put Homeless in Hotels

The Center Square

In states like California, Colorado, Washington and Arizona, cities this summer are spending millions buying hotels and converting them to shelters for the homeless.

In Los Angeles, there is a ballot initiative in 2024 to require hotels to use vacant rooms to house homeless people besides paying customers. The American Hotel & Lodging Association has objected to the proposal.

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More than a Quarter of Homeowners in U.S. Are ‘House Poor’

The Center Square

Nationwide 27.4 percent of homeowners are considered “house poor,” meaning they spend more than 30 percent of their income on housing costs.

However, in some U.S. cities, far more Americans are living beyond their means, according to research from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. In Hialeah, Florida, 59.3 percent of homeowners are spending more than 30 percent of their income on housing costs. While Hialeah has the highest percentage of homeowners spending more than 30 percent of their income on housing costs, it was not alone.

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‘Democratic Socialists of America’ Building Ranks, Pushing Local Democrats to the Left

Virginia Star Staff

The Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) is gaining steam in recent years and has been pushing the Democratic Party to the left, particularly in deep blue cities, advocating for policies that even moderate Democrats disagree with.

Democratic Socialists make up the left flank of the Democratic Party, supporting abolishing prisons, aggressive climate policies, rent controls and radical racial equity policies, according to the Democratic Socialist website. They’ve been aggressively adding to their membership over the past few years, as well as gaining ground in key deep blue cities such as New York City, Los Angeles and Minneapolis, calling for radical policy changes and opposing mainstream Democrats.

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Environmental Activists Push to Cancel July 4th Fireworks Shows

Virginia Star Staff

Multiple fireworks shows slated for July 4th along Los Angeles’ coastline have been canceled in the wake of a county mandate that was initially spurred by environmental activists, according to the Los Angeles Times.

The L.A. Regional Water Quality Control Board implemented a firework permit rule in an effort to clamp down on pollutants from firework displays, which reportedly affect nearby water sources, the LA Times reported. The Coastal Environmental Rights Foundation (CERF) brought a lawsuit against Long Beach’s Big Bang on the Bay, alleging that a firework show in 2022 violated the Clean Water Act.

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Texas’ Operation Lone Star: More Than 500 Buses Sent to Sanctuary Cities

The Center Square

Since Texas’ border security mission Operation Lone Star (OLS) launched more than two years ago, the multi-agency effort has led to the apprehension of nearly 400,000 foreign nationals who entered the U.S. illegally.

Since last April, Texas has sent over 500 buses of foreign nationals to six so-called sanctuary cities.

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Texas Sends First Bus of Illegal Border Crossers to Los Angeles

The Center Square

A bus of foreign nationals who illegally entered Texas and were apprehended and released by the Biden administration were taken to Los Angeles for the first time, Gov. Greg Abbott said. They were dropped off at the Los Angeles Union Station Wednesday evening.

“Texas’ small border towns remain overwhelmed and overrun by the thousands of people illegally crossing into Texas from Mexico because of President Biden’s refusal to secure the border,” Abbott said. “Los Angeles is a major city that migrants seek to go to, particularly now that its city leaders approved its self-declared sanctuary city status. Our border communities are on the frontlines of President Biden’s border crisis, and Texas will continue providing this much-needed relief until he steps up to do his job and secure the border.”

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Commentary: What to Do About American’s Decline

Virginia Star Staff

Twenty-first-century America was on a trajectory of gradual decline — until it began to implode.

Was the accelerant the COVID-19 pandemic and unhinged lockdowns? Or was the catalyst the woke revolution fueled by the 2020 summer of exempted rioting, looting, arson, and violence? Or was it perhaps the deranged fixation on removing Donald Trump from the presidency and destroying the rule of law in the process? Or all that and more?

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Bank Records Show Millions in Transaction Between Hunter Biden, China Firms: Sen. Johnson

Just the News

Wisconsin GOP Sen. Ron Johnson says the Chinese-American financial institution Cathay Bank has given Senate Republicans records showing millions of dollars going from Chinese companies to President Biden’s son Hunter Biden.

Republicans and others started raising concerns during President Biden’s successful 2020 White House campaign, if not earlier, that Hunter Biden used the family name and influence while his father was vice president to make millions in overseas business deals, which also could have compromised U.S. national security.

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Americans Continue to Flee Crime-Ridden Blue Cities for the Burbs and Red States, New Census Data Shows

Virginia Star Staff

Americans once again fled large cities for suburbs and Republican-led states in massive numbers from June 2021 to June 2022, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis of U.S. Census data.

More than 800,000 people in total left the country’s large metropolitan areas, compared to 1.2 million the year before, in an ongoing trend sparked by the pandemic, according to the WSJ. Ten of the nation’s 25 largest metropolitan areas saw population loss, and most of the top cities that saw population gains were located in red states.

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Group Names Chicago, New Orleans as U.S. Murder Capitals

The Center Square

Chicago recorded 697 total homicides in 2022, far more than any other city in the United States, but New Orleans had the highest murder rate per capita, according to a new report from a nonprofit research group. 

Chicago had more total homicides in 2022 than Philadelphia (516), New York City (438), Houston (435) and Los Angeles (382), which rounded out the top five, according to a report from Wirepoints, an Illinois-based research and news organization that surveyed 2022 crime data from 75 of the largest U.S. cities.

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Catholic Bishop Fatally Shot in California

Just the News

A Los Angeles Archdiocese auxiliary bishop known as a “peacemaker” was shot to death Saturday afternoon, officials said.

Bishop David O’Connell, a 69-year-old native of Ireland, was shot and killed Saturday just before 1 p.m. local time inside his home in the neighborhood of Hacienda Heights, the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department said.

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The Country’s Biggest School Districts Are Explicitly Hiding Kids’ Gender Transitions from Parents

Admin

The nation’s largest school districts are implementing policies that require educators to keep students’ gender transitions a secret from their parents.

Los Angeles Unified School District, Chicago Public Schools and New York Public Schools are promoting practices and policies that hide a student’s transgender status from their parents. The policies have become a cultural flashpoint amid a battle over the role parents should play in their child’s education, and the extent to which gender ideology has infiltrated K-12 classrooms.

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Democrats Pivot on Law and Order as Soft-on-Crime Liberals Assaulted, Burglarized

Admin

Democrats’ virtual 180 on the issue of crime — a journey from supporting the “defund the police” movement to espousing tougher law enforcement — has been accentuated by a striking pattern in recent months: prominent liberals being mugged, sometimes quite literally, by the harsh reality of rising crime as victims themselves.

The latest liberal to embody this shift is Bill Walton, the 69-year-old basketball legend-turned-garrulous broadcaster, who has a history of stirring controversy and advocating a range of progressive causes over the years.

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Los Angeles Homeless Population Jumps to over 69,000

Admin

The total number of homeless people in Los Angeles County has skyrocketed over the last few years, reaching a staggering new total of over 69,000.

Fox News reports that the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority (LAHSA), which released its updated report on Thursday, found an increase of 4.1 percent since 2020. In the entirety of the county, approximately 69,144 people are now homeless; in just the city of Los Angeles alone, there are 41,980 homeless people.

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Dozens of Firearms Stolen from Trains in Los Angeles

Virginia Star Staff
handgun with ammo

In the latest train robbery in the city of Los Angeles, dozens of firearms, including handguns and shotguns, were stolen from a cargo train in a massive raid.

As reported by ABC News, three suspects arrested by the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) last summer were found to be in possession of some of the new .22-caliber handguns from the stolen cache. The guns were found to match the larger batch of 36 handguns stolen from the train that had been bound for Tennessee, according to police.

One of the suspects admitted that the guns were stolen while the train was in the Lincoln Heights rail yard, which has become a prime target for train robberies in recent months. Later, two more suspects were arrested with shotguns that were found to have come from a larger batch of 46 shotguns that had also been stolen from the train.

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Gov. Newsom Calls LA Area ‘Third World Country’ Because of ‘Gangs,’ Then Apologizes

Virginia Star Staff

Democratic California Gov. Gavin Newsom visited the Union Pacific railroad in Los Angeles on Thursday to help clean up the site following a spate of railcar thefts, bemoaning the state of the area.

“I’m asking myself, what the hell is going on? We look like a third-world country,” Newsom said to reporters, according to Politico.

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Thieves Reportedly Targeting Trains, Delivery Trucks in Atlanta, Los Angeles

Admin

Criminals have reportedly opened up a new lucrative front in the ongoing package-theft epidemic throughout the U.S., targeting shipping infrastructure to steal goods before they even get to consumers’ porches.

UPS Chief Executive Carol Tome told CNBC this week that one of the company’s 18-wheeler shipping trucks was robbed several weeks ago in December. “[The driver] was stopped at gunpoint,” she said. “He was zip-tied, thrown into the back of his feeder car, and they took the packages.”

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Homeless Encampments Begin Forming Near Schools in Los Angeles

Admin

Homeless encampments have begun cropping up near schools throughout the city of Los Angeles, even despite a citywide ban on any such encampments near public areas, as reported by the Epoch Times.

The Los Angeles City Council had previously passed a new resolution, Ordinance 41.18, which was signed into law by Mayor Eric Garcetti (D-Calif.), forbidding any such homeless camps from being set up within 500 feet of “sensitive-use” areas, including schools, daycares, libraries, and parks. The ordinance also banned such camps from forming near freeway overpasses and underpasses, ramps, tunnels, and bridges.

But in order for the ordinance to be enforced, each individual district’s councilmember must introduce a motion to do so, which then must be approved by the council. As such, homeless encampments have begun sprouting up near schools in the Venice Beach neighborhood, which falls under District 11; that district is represented by Councilman Mike Bonin (D-Calif.), who has a history of refusing to enforce anti-homeless measures for other districts, and has not yet introduced any such measures to protect his own district.

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Los Angeles Students Lost over 90,000 School Days in Compliance with Quarantine Protocol

Virginia Star Staff

A California activist group calculated that students in Los Angeles County missed over 90,000 school days in the span of a month, Fox News reported.

In about a month a total of 92,455 in-person school days in Los Angeles County were lost, which Jonathan Zachreson, the founder of Reopen California Schools called “astounding,” Fox News reported Monday. Quarantine measures to mitigate the COVID-19 pandemic kept kids home from school, which led to the learning loss that Zachreson said “could have been avoided” if school officials hadn’t intervened in public health matters.

Many students were able to stay in school because of “Test to Stay” programs, which allow unvaccinated students who are exposed to the virus to stay in school as long as they are asymptomatic, wear a mask and take two COVID-19 tests a week, according to a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report.

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Transgender Person Who Allegedly Exposed Himself at L.A. Spa Charged with Indecent Exposure

Virginia Star Staff
Close up of Wi Spa sign on building

The transgender individual who exposed himself in front of women and children at a California luxury spa earlier this year, has been charged with indecent exposure, the New York Post reported Thursday. Darren Agee Merager, 52, is a registered sex offender with two prior convictions of indecent exposure, according to the Post’s law-enforcement sources. Merager is also facing “six felony counts of indecent exposure over a separate locker room incident in December 2018,” according to the Post.

As American Greatness previously reported, several women complained last June, when the biological male allegedly exposed his penis at the Wi Spa in Los Angeles.

Viral video footage of the incident showed a woman angrily confronting a staff member of the spa about a naked man who had apparently exposed himself in an area reserved for females.

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Viral Video Shows Customer Blasting LA Spa After She Says Biological Male Was Allowed to Parade Around Naked in Front of Women and Children

Virginia Star Staff

A Los Angeles luxury spa is facing intense criticism after a biological male was allegedly allowed to parade around in the nude in front of women and children. Video footage that went viral over the weekend, shows a woman angrily confronting a staff member of the Wi Spa about a naked man who had apparently exposed himself in an area reserved for females.

“It’s okay for a man to go into the women’s section [and] show his penis around other women—young little girls—underage?!” the incensed woman can be heard saying in the video. “Your spa—Wi Spa condones that?!”

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Rising Crime Forces Liberals to Reckon with Their Stance on the Police

Virginia Star Staff

by Ailan Evans   As rates of violent crime continue to rise across the country and once-safe neighborhoods face increased dangers, many liberal communities are having to confront their complicated relationship with the police. Following the killing of George Floyd in May 2020, the defund the police movement attracted attention and support…

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Data Shows Increased Homicides in Six Major Cities Across the Country

Virginia Star Staff
Police line do not cross tape

The number of homicides in six major cities across the country has increased compared to last year, disproportionately affecting black people, according to crime data.

Black people have represented a massive share of murder victims in six major cities through the first six months of 2021 compared to last year, which itself saw a large crime surge, according to data analyzed by the Daily Caller News Foundation. The DCNF analyzed both police department data and homicide reports compiled by local news outlets to determine how black people have been victimized in the wake of the 2020 crime spike.

“We are seeing an uptick in violent crime across the country, specifically gun violence,” Miami-Dade County Mayor Daniella Levine Cava told The New York Times earlier this month.

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Teamsters Officials Forced out of LA Trucking Company After 80 Percent of Workers Sign Petition to Remove Them

The Center Square

The union for a Los Angeles trucking company, Teamsters Local 986, was forced out after nearly 80% of workers signed a petition with the National Labor Relations Board to remove it.

The National Labor Relations Act governs private sector workers, unionization and how workers can remove a union from their workplace. In 27 right-to-work states, union payments are voluntary. In California and other non right-to-work states, union payments are mandatory for all unionized and non-union employees.

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LA Teachers Union Agrees to Reopen Second Largest School District

Virginia Star Staff

United Teachers Los Angeles and Los Angeles city officials have come to a tentative agreement, creating a path for the nation’s second-largest school district to reopen.

Students in the Los Angeles Unified School District would return to in-person classes in mid-April under the tentative agreement struck Tuesday evening, according to city and union officials, The New York Times reported. The Los Angeles school board and United Teachers Los Angeles (UTLA) members still need to ratify the agreement.

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L.A. Sheriff: 235 Arrests Enforcing COVID-19 Restrictions

Virginia Star Staff

As of Wednesday, the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department had made 235 arrests over this month in an effort to enforce coronavirus restrictions as the region continues to see a surge in COVID-19 cases, officials said Wednesday.

Sheriff Alex Villanueva said his agency has patrolled and targeted underground parties.

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California Fire That Killed Three Threatens Thousands of Homes

The Associated Press

A Northern California wildfire threatened thousands of homes Thursday after winds whipped it into a monster that incinerated houses in a small mountain community and killed at least three people.

Several other people have been critically burned and hundreds, if not thousands, of homes and other buildings are believed to have been damaged or destroyed by the fire in the foothills of the northern Sierra Nevada, authorities said.

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