February 21, 2022 - The Michigan Star

EPA Pledges $1 Billion for Great Lakes ‘Areas of Concern’

February 21, 2022February 20, 2022 The Center Square

The Biden administration and U.S. Environmental Protection Agency have announced a $1 billion cleanup fund for 22 of 25 Great Lakes “Areas of Concern,” or AOCs.

President Joe Biden announced the cleanup funding during a press event on Thursday in Lorain, Ohio. According to Press Secretary Jen Psaki, the president will “deliver remarks on how the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law delivers for the American people by investing in clean-up and restoration efforts in the Great Lakes region and surrounding waterways.”

Commentary: America Is Not Divided, It’s Being Hijacked

February 21, 2022February 20, 2022 Michigan Star Staff

It seems lately like everywhere, on both the Right and the Left, we are hearing a chorus of voices tell us America is hopelessly divided and on the brink of a second civil war.

The level of rancor and incivility characterizing much of our contemporary political dialogue appears to confirm as much on a daily basis. It appears Left and Right have arrived at irreconcilable worldviews, disagreeing on first principles, core convictions, specific policy choices and ultimate ends. Increasingly, they seem unable to see eye to eye even when it comes to pure matters of fact.

Migrant Encounters at the Border Have Nearly Doubled Since Biden Took Office

February 21, 2022February 20, 2022 Michigan Star Staff

The number of migrants encountered at the southern border in January nearly doubled that of January 2021, when President Joe Biden took office, U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) reported Friday.

CBP agents encountered 153,941 migrants in January, according to an agency press release, nearly twice the 78,414 migrants encountered in January 2021.

Commentary: In Trudeau’s Canada, a Pastor Is Imprisoned for Talking to Truckers

February 21, 2022February 20, 2022 Michigan Star Staff

“In an unjust society the only place for a just man is in prison,” said the writer Henry David Thoreau. That is increasingly true in Canada, where critics of its COVID restrictions can be thrown in jail for peaceful protests. Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau is unleashing powers meant for terrorists on the truckers. His mandates already damaged their livelihoods, but now his treatment of the truckers as a group akin to ISIS threatens to wipe them out completely. Meanwhile, a Calgary pastor who merely preached to the truckers finds himself in solitary confinement on a phony charge of incitement, according to his lawyer.

The condition of religious freedom in America is pretty dismal, but it appears to be even worse in Canada. This imprisoned pastor, Artur Pawlowski, didn’t urge the truckers to violence. On the contrary, he explicitly disavowed violence. “May God help us all, because we don’t fight with guns and swords,” he said to truckers gathered for a freedom convoy rally. “We don’t fight with Tasers and the police vehicles. We don’t. We just want to go back and work hard and achieve something and provide for our families. We just want to be left alone.”

Country-Rocker Jacob Bryant Makes His Opry Debut

February 21, 2022February 20, 2022 Bethany Bowman

Country-rocker Jacob Bryant earns a standing ovation at Grand Ole Opry debut.

University of Wisconsin Police Department’s ‘Equity Dashboard’ Tracks Arrests, ‘Use of Force’ Incidents by Race

February 21, 2022February 20, 2022 Michigan Star Staff

The University of Wisconsin-Madison Police Department (UWPD) maintains an “Equity Dashboard” that tracks law enforcement encounters by race, ethnicity, and gender.

“This dashboard is the result of more than a year of collaboration through our Racial Equity Initiative,” the police department states on its website.

The dashboard launched Dec. 9 as the result of the university’s “Racial Equity Initiative,” which the institution announced in June 2020 following the death of George Floyd.

Minority Leader McCarthy Endorses Rep. Cheney Opponent Harriet Hageman

February 21, 2022February 20, 2022 Michigan Star Staff

In the latest blow to Congresswoman Liz Cheney’s (R-Wyo.) re-election bid, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) has endorsed her biggest primary opponent.

As reported by CNN, McCarthy issued his endorsement of Harriet Hageman on Thursday, declaring that he was “proud to endorse Harriet Hageman for Congress.”

Number of American Adults Who Claim to Be LGBT Has Doubled in 10 Years, Particularly Among Generation Z

February 21, 2022February 20, 2022 Michigan Star Staff

The latest findings from Gallup indicate that the number of American adults who claim to be part of the “LGBT” crowd – lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender – has doubled in the last decade.

ABC News reports that the new percentage of LGBT-affiliated Americans in 2021 is 7.1 percent, which is slightly more than double the previous total of 3.5 percent in 2012. The survey was conducted by interviewing over 12,000 adults in the United States. Of the remaining percentage, 86.3 percent confirmed their heterosexuality, while 6.6 percent did not say one way or the other.

Media Wage Harassment Campaign Against Freedom Convoy Donors Doxxed In GiveSendGo Hack

February 21, 2022February 20, 2022 Michigan Star Staff

Media outlets are continuing to message small-dollar donors to the Freedom Convoy whose identities were leaked to the public after a hack of crowdfunding site GiveSendGo.

The personal information of roughly 90,000 donors to the Freedom Convoy, a group of truckers and hackers protesting Canada’s vaccine mandates and COVID-19 restrictions, was leaked after hackers breached GiveSendGo late Sunday. The leaked data included names, email handles, IP addresses and zip codes, and was provided to “journalists and researchers” by Distributed Denial of Secrets, an activist group hosting the information.

Biden Pentagon Let 50 Afghans Posing Serious Security Risks into the United States, Watchdog Finds

February 21, 2022February 20, 2022 Michigan Star Staff

The Biden administration failed to use all available screening data to vet Afghan refugees brought to the United States last year, allowing at least 50 individuals posing “potentially significant security concerns” to make it inside America’s borders, the Pentagon’s chief watchdog is warning.

To make matters worse, the Defense Department inspector general reported to Congress this week that 28 of 31 Afghan evacuees with known “derogatory information” can no longer be located.

Funeral Directors, Embalmers Alarmed by Unusual Blood Clots in Vaccinated Bodies

February 21, 2022February 20, 2022 Michigan Star Staff

Board-certified funeral directors and embalmers are coming forward to tell tales of horror featuring vaccinated bodies with veins and arteries clogged with strange, rubbery, worm-like clots.

Richard Hirschman, a funeral director and embalmer from Alabama, with over twenty years of experience in the field, has said in recent interviews that he had never seen anything like it until around the middle of 2021, after the mass injections of the experimental COVID vaccines began. He says his colleagues in the field are seeing the same thing, and the numbers are increasing.

Commentary: Failing Public Schools Motivate More Black Families to Home-School

February 21, 2022February 20, 2022 Michigan Star Staff

As the United States observes Black History Month, African-American families are making history by leaving failing public schools and home-schooling their children in record numbers.

Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, parents, and especially black parents, found public schools incapable of handling the crisis. Even prior to the pandemic, public schools were failing to improve learning among African-American children.

Students Launch Bipartisan Protest Against University’s China Investments

February 21, 2022February 20, 2022 Michigan Star Staff

George Washington University (GWU) students held a bipartisan protest Tuesday, urging the Washington D.C. institution to divest its endowment from companies that are complicit in China’s human rights abuses.

The demonstration, which involved both of the university’s College Republicans and College Democrats chapters, comes one week after university President Mark S. Wrighton rescinded his criticism of on-campus artwork that critiqued China’s abuses against its Uyghur population.

“We’ve all banded together,” activist and GWU alum Juan Carlos Mora told Campus Reform during the protest.

Commentary: Six Things We Know About the CIA’s Secret Mass Surveillance Program

February 21, 2022February 20, 2022 Michigan Star Staff

The Central Intelligence Agency has secretly been running mass surveillance operations to collect data on Americans, according to a newly published letter written by Sens. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) and Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.).

Wyden and Henrich, both members of the Senate Intelligence Committee, wrote the letter in April 2021, and the letter was partly declassified on Thursday.

‘Mutually Beneficial’: Major News Outlet Expands Climate Change Reporting Funded by Left-Wing Activist Groups

February 21, 2022February 20, 2022 Michigan Star Staff

The Associated Press announced Tuesday that it had secured funding from several progressive interest groups to hire two dozen climate change reporters.

The outlet referred to the groups’ funding as “philanthropic grants” and promised that the groups wouldn’t have any editorial control over the climate change content published, according to an announcement. But the five organizations — the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, the Rockefeller Foundation, Quadrivium and the Walton Family Foundation — are well known for pushing a variety of left-wing causes and funding Democratic political campaigns.

SBA Oversight Failures Lead to $93M in Questionable Awards to Disadvantaged Firms, Internal Audit Finds

February 21, 2022February 20, 2022 Michigan Star Staff

The Golden Horseshoe is a weekly designation from Just The News intended to highlight egregious examples of wasteful taxpayer spending by the government. The award is named for the horseshoe-shaped toilet seats for military airplanes that cost the Pentagon a whopping $640 each back in the 1980s.

This week’s Golden Horseshoe is awarded to the Small Business Administration, which awarded $93 million in questionable contracts to small businesses owned by socially and economically disadvantaged individuals under the agency’s 8 (a) Business Development Program, according to a recent audit by the SBA Office of Inspector General.