States Launch ‘Border Strike Force’ to Challenge Biden on Lack of Enforcement

President Joe Biden has faced heavy criticism over the surge in illegal immigration since he took office, and now a coalition of states has formed to challenge the president on the issue.

So far, 26 governors have signed on to the creation of the “Border Strike Force,” a coalition of state leaders working together to fight Mexican cartels and to slow the massive spike in illegal immigration since early last year.

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Blocking Evidence: Clinton Campaign Tries to Keep Memos from Durham’s Upcoming Trial

Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign and its former top officials are intervening in Special Counsel John Durham’s investigation, seeking to block the release of memos about its Russia research on Donald Trump on grounds that it is covered by attorney-client privilege.

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Biden Admin to Reverse Trump-Era ‘Conscience’ Exemption for Healthcare Workers

The Biden Administration’s Department Health and Human Services (HHS) has confirmed that it plans to eliminate a policy implemented during the Trump Administration that allows healthcare workers to cite religious or moral beliefs when seeking exemptions from performing certain acts in the line of duty.

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A Lead Prosecutor in Michigan Gov. Whitmer ‘Kidnapping’ Trial Withdraws from Case

Following a stunning defeat in federal court earlier this month, one of the lead prosecutors handling the trial of four men charged with conspiring to kidnap Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer in 2020 has withdrawn from the case.

Andrew Birge, the U.S. Attorney for the Western District of Michigan, announced in a filing yesterday that Jonathan Roth “withdraws his appearance as an attorney for the United States,” Roth and assistant U.S. Attorney Nils Kessler represented the government during the three-week trial, which resulted in the acquittal of two men and a mistrial for two others.

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Nearly Two-Thirds of Voters Believe Biden Is Compromised by Ties to China, Poll

Nearly two-third of U.S. voters think President Biden has been compromised by his and his families’ ties to China, according to new survey.

The survey from the Trafalgar Group, in conjunction with Convention of State Action, found over 50% of those polled said it is “very likely” that Biden is “conflicted/compromised when dealing with China due to the Biden family’s personal business dealings in China.”

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Commentary: The White House’s Swift Surrender on Federal Mask Order Underscores the Tricky Politics of Mask Mandates

The Biden administration announced Monday it will no longer enforce a federal mask mandate on public transportation, including airplanes. The decision was announced after Federal Judge Kathryn Kimball Mizelle ruled that the directive was unlawful, noting that the CDC had not sought public comment prior to its order—issued 14 months ago—and did not adequately explain its reasoning.

Following the court’s decision, four major airlines immediately announced they would drop mask requirements on all domestic flights.

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Border Patrol Arrests Highest Number of Migrants in over 20 Years

U.S. Border Patrol agents in March arrested the highest number of migrants at the U.S.-Mexico border in a month in over 20 years.

Border agents arrested 209,906 people in March, according to Customs and Border Protection (CBP) statistics released Monday. The figure is the highest number of monthly arrests at the southern border since March 2000, when Border Patrol apprehended 220,063 migrants.

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Numbers of Black Americans Murdered Increased in Wake of Defund the Police Movement: Report

Support for calls across the nation to to defund police departments nationwide and pandemic-related factors has led to an increase in the number of murders of black Americans, according to an analysis by the Manhattan Institute.

The overall murder rate increased 30% from 2020 to 2021, according to data from the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

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Commentary: ‘Genocide’ Is Not a Throwaway Term of Abuse

Soaring inflation is leaving Americans battered and bruised—and not just inflation in prices. Inflation in rhetoric is also doing a number on the people of our republic.

We’ve seen it unfold with depressing regularity. Donald Trump was a “fascist dictator,” we were told. The Capitol riot was a “coup” and an “insurrection.” Climate change poses an “existential threat” to all life on earth. And, just this past week, after failing to get the legislative redistricting map he wanted from the state Supreme Court, Wisconsin’s Democratic Governor Tony Evers declared: “At a time when our democracy is under near-constant attack, the judiciary has abandoned our democracy in our most dire hour.”

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Washington Post Publishes Straight-Up Propaganda Piece Outing ‘Libs of TikTok’

Washington Post reporter Taylor Lorenz exposed the identity behind the “Libs Of TikTok” Twitter account in an article that widely characterized exposure of questionable school policy and problematic teacher-student interactions as “anti-LGBT.”

Rather than grapple with the issues the account brought to light — some of which resulted in discipline of teachers — Lorenz drew on interviews from left-wing activists at the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and the left-wing organization Media Matters, who predictably supported the narrative that exposing controversial classroom instruction to the public at large essentially amounts to bigotry for the transgender and gay community.

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Commentary: European Military Contractor Must Be Punished for Cheating

Members of the military know they must be able to trust everyone in their squad. This trust is earned. That’s why troops drill together, eat together, and live together. It builds confidence and trust.

Of course, they must also be able to trust their equipment. The Army still remembers when its bazookas were useless against Soviet-made tanks during the Korean war. Today’s American warriors don’t want to repeat the same mistakes by using inferior equipment. And when it comes to weapon systems, there is no reason to trust certain contractors — including the European aerospace giant Airbus.

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Michigan Public Schools Enrollment Rebounds from COVID Drop

Michigan public school enrollment increased by about 5,844 students this school year, slightly recovering after more than 50,000 kids left public schools during the COVID-19 pandemic in the 2019-2020 school year.

About 1,443,456 public school students are registered for the 2021-2022 school year, rising from the 2020-2021 school year enrollment of 1,437,612.

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Texas Mask Mandate Repeal Case Attorney Welcomes Florida Judge’s Ruling

Neil W. McCabe, the national political editor of The Star News Network, interviewed Robert Henneke, the executive director and general counsel of The Texas Public Policy Foundation, about Florida federal Judge Kathryn Kimball Mizelle’s Oct. 18, 2022 ruling that overturned the Centers for Disease Control’s mask mandate for air travelers and public transportation passengers.

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Texas Mask Mandate Repeal Case Attorney Welcomes Florida Judge’s Ruling

Neil W. McCabe, the national political editor of The Star News Network, interviewed Robert Henneke, the executive director and general counsel of The Texas Public Policy Foundation, about Florida federal Judge Kathryn Kimball Mizelle’s Oct. 18, 2022 ruling that overturned the Centers for Disease Control’s mask mandate for air travelers and public transportation passengers.

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Surge in Homeschooling Families Continues after Schools Reopen

The number of families homeschooling in the United States has remained significantly above pre-pandemic levels even though government schools have reopened.

The number of homeschooling students increased by 63% during the 2020-2021 school year in 18 states that shared data, AP reported. That percentage then dropped by only 17% in the next academic year.

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Solomon: ‘History Has Evolved,’ Now We Know Hunter’s Laptop ‘Worse’ Than We Thought

Neil W. McCabe, the national political editor of The Star News Network, interviewed veteran Washington journalist John Solomon, who is now the founder and editor-in-chief of “Just the News” about his coverage of the Hunter Biden laptop.

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Texas Mask Mandate Lawsuit Attorney Welcomes Florida Judge Striking Mandate in Separate Suit, but Says: ‘Our Case Will Continue’

The executive director and general counsel of the Texas Public Policy Foundation told The Star News Network he welcomed Monday’s ruling in Florida by federal Judge Kathryn Kimball Mizelle, a former law clerk for Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, that overturned the Centers for Disease Control’s mask mandate for public transportation and air travel.

“The arguments that are pending in our ongoing lawsuit in Texas are the same arguments that prevailed in the case in Florida with a judge in Florida agreeing that the Centers for Disease Control did not have the statutory authority that it claimed to impose a face-covering requirement for all Americans engaging in transportation,” said Robert Henneke, who represents both the foundation and Texas Republican Rep. Beth Van Duyne in an independent lawsuit challenging both the CDC’s mask mandate and the Transportation Safety Administration’s derivative mandate that relies on the CDC’s now-overturned authority.

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Commentary: Twitter Is Not a Business, It’s a Political Operation

Person holding phone up with Twitter sign up page on smart phone.

Here’s your first clue Twitter is not really a business with a fiduciary duty to maximize shareholder value – when Elon Musk made a public offer to buy the company for $54.20 a share (roughly $40 billion) the company’s management not only turned down the offer, but began to work on a poison pill defense aimed solely at Mr. Musk, who is already Twitter’s largest shareholder.

According to reporting by the New York Times, some investors and Wall Street analysts said that Mr. Musk’s offer of $54.20 a share was too low, and that he would need to go to at least $60 a share to appeal to shareholders. That would be 25 percent higher than the share price when Mr. Musk announced this month that he had acquired a 9 percent stake in Twitter.

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New York City ‘Blue Ribbon’ Principal Accused of Fraud to Bolster Graduation Rate Removed from Post but Given $1.8 Million ‘Desk Job’

A Queens, New York City, high school principal who had been removed from his post after accusations he padded his school’s graduation rate, has received a “sweetheart” settlement deal that allows him to have a “desk job” with the city’s Department of Education and ultimately pocket more than $1.8 million, the New York Post reported Saturday.

Khurshid Abdul-Mutakabbir, former principal at Maspeth High School, which was conferred the federal “Blue Ribbon” award in 2018, demanded his teachers pass students and allow them to graduate regardless of their academic performance, the Post revealed in reports over the past several years.

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Commentary: Ohio Professor Wins Settlement in ‘Preferred Pronoun’ Case

In a refreshing religious liberty result from the world of academia, free speech won and preferred pronouns lost.

A professor at Shawnee State University, in Portsmouth, Ohio, will be able to honor his conscience as a Christian who believes God created human beings as male and female and that a person’s sex cannot change, and will not be required by the school to compromise that belief when addressing students.

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Commentary: Louisiana’s Bold Move to Overhaul High School Career and Technical Education

America’s high schools have problems. Nearly twenty years ago, Bill Gates observed that the existing model is obsolete — that, even when high schools “work,” the results are too often mediocre. In 2016, The Education Trust found that 47 percent of high schoolers graduated prepared for neither college nor a career. In 2018, Gallup reported that two-thirds of high schoolers described themselves as wholly or partially disengaged. And, just last month, the National Center for Education Statistics concluded that high schools are plagued by grade inflation: Over the past decade, grades have risen to a record high even as math and science performance by 12th graders has edged down.

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Biden White House Report Says Energy Taxes Are ‘Needed’ for Green Transition

The White House said Americans should pay higher taxes to ensure a rapid green transition away from fossil fuels in a report on President Joe Biden’s economic record.

The federal government can encourage such a shift through carbon taxes or a cap and trade system forcing an emissions limit on companies, said the Council of Economic Advisers (CEA) report released last week. The White House added that consumers would continue purchasing “artificially inexpensive, carbon-intensive goods” without proper government policies in place.

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Mitch McConnell Moves to Protect Republican Moderates, Unseat Dems in 2022 Through Senate Leadership Fund SuperPAC

A super PAC attached to Republican Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell is reserving $141 million worth of advertisements to bolster conservative candidates in the midterms, Politico reported Monday.

“This is such a strong year that we need to invest as broadly and deeply as we can,” Steven Law, president of the Senate Leadership Fund (SLF), told Politico. “In the Senate, majority control is everything. It determines what happens on the floor and what doesn’t happen. It will have an impact on future Supreme Court nominations. I mean, there’s so much at stake.”

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University Hosts ‘Drag Queen Story Hour’ for 2-Year-Olds

Oklahoma State University hosted “Drag Queen Story Hour” geared towards small children as young as two years old, just days after hosting its annual Dragonfly Drag Show.

As part of the school’s Pride 2022 campaign, two local drag queens read books “highlighting inclusion and acceptance” to the children and led “come-and-go craft” activities.

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Four Largest Airlines Drop COVID Mask Requirement Hours After Trump-Appointed Judge Strikes Down CDC Mandate

Four major U.S. airlines are ditching COVID-19 mask requirements after a federal judge in Florida on Monday struck down the Biden administration’s mask mandate for air passengers and others mass travelers.

Several airlines, including United Airlines, Delta, Southwest Airlines and American Airlines announced that they were dropping the mask requirements for passengers and employees.

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Michigan Farmers Struggle as Fertilizer Prices Jump 120 Percent

Spiking fertilizer prices spiking over the last two years is contributing to current rising food inflation, says Theresa Sisung, an industry relations specialist for the Michigan Farm Bureau.

Record 40-year-high inflation is biting into Michiganders’ budgets from more expensive cars, higher energy costs, and higher prices at the grocery store, and it’s no different for farmers who tend roughly 47,600 farms in the Wolverine state that house nearly 10 million acres of farmland.

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19 Attorneys General Urge Supreme Court to Uphold Ruling Ordering Full Reinstatement of ‘Remain in Mexico’ Policy

Nineteen attorneys general, led by Indiana, have filed an amicus brief with the U.S. Supreme Court in support of a lawsuit filed by Texas and Missouri against the Biden administration.

They’re asking the Supreme Court to uphold a lower court’s order instructing the Biden administration to follow the law to fully reinstate the Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP), otherwise known as the “Remain in Mexico” policy.

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Commentary: Obama Wants the ‘Contest of Ideas’ Rigged

Barack Obama holds court these days as a great authority on the preservation of a civilized democracy. He says that nothing worries him more than “disinformation.” Never mind that he rose to power as a manipulative acolyte of Saul Alinsky, the famously amoral Chicago activist who endorsed disinformation as a tool of “community organizing.” Much of Alinsky’s activism consisted of duping ordinary Americans. Were Alinsky alive today, he would no doubt enjoy the spectacle of a former president steeped in his duplicitous methods lecturing Americans on the dangers of disinformation.

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Commentary: The Other Phony Kidnapping Plot

In the spring of 2020, President Donald Trump posted three tweets in a row aimed at Democratic governors continuing to impose draconian lockdowns amid the COVID-19 pandemic. “LIBERATE MINNESOTA!” Trump tweeted on the morning of April 17, 2020. A few moments later, he tweeted “LIBERATE MICHIGAN!” and “LIBERATE VIRGINIA!”

His tweets coincided with anti-lockdown rallies in several states, including a blockade around the Michigan Capitol building in Lansing a few days prior. As usual, the media expressed shock and horror at the innocuous tweets, insisting the president was encouraging violence against his political rivals. 

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GOP Reps Demand DHS Provide ICE Data Biden Is ‘Hiding’

Republican members of Congress are asking Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas for key immigration enforcement data they argue the Biden administration is hiding from the public, according to a letter exclusively obtained by the Daily Caller News Foundation.

The letter, sent Thursday, is led by Republican Texas Rep. Chip Roy and co-signed by 19 other Republican lawmakers who argued that delayed Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) fiscal year 2021 Enforcement and Removal statistics that showed significant decreases in arrests only provided a “limited” look into the agency’s enforcement and removals.

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Poll: Voters Skeptical of Effectiveness of Gun Control Laws

Americans are skeptical about gun control measures, according to a new poll.

Rasmussen reports released new polling showing that the majority of Americans do not think criminals will obey federal gun control laws. The poll comes on the heels of a mass shooting in Brooklyn and President Joe Biden’s speech on gun control earlier this week.

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Hispanic Voters Deserting Biden in Major Warning Sign for Democrats

President Biden’s approval rating among Hispanics has plummeted as the historically Democratic bloc’s support for Republicans continues to increase, presenting an electoral problem for Democrats, whose immigration policies have fueled much of this shift.

Only 26% of Hispanic voters approve of Biden’s job performance, compared to 54% who disapprove, according to a Quinnipiac poll released Wednesday.

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Commentary: Soros’ ‘Open Society’ Vision Is Leaving a Dark Permanent Legacy

The Right’s attitude toward the ultrarich has evolved since 2012, when the Republican Party’s presidential nominee was Mitt Romney, a man who campaigned for policies like the Trans-Pacific Partnership. Many on the Right now recognize that there is no obvious connection between a person possessing fabulous wealth and favoring a free market economy, as evidenced by the politics of such robber barons as Jeff Bezos, Larry Fink, and Pierre Omidyar. 

Yet even prior to that transformation, one name on the list of billionaires has always induced heated reactions on the Right: George Soros. There have been many books authored by and about Soros, and he has been prolific in publishing his opinions on market economies, democracies, and globalism.

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Secret Service Agents Outraged by White House Downplaying of Bites by ‘First Dog’

Newly-released documents reveal widespread discontent among the United States Secret Service after the Biden Administration repeatedly tried to suppress and downplay multiple instances of agents being bitten by Joe Biden’s dog, Major.

The New York Post reports that federal documents, released via a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request by the watchdog group Judicial Watch, reveal that attacks against agents by the dog took place on eight consecutive days, both earlier and later than originally reported by the press. Despite numerous complaints from agents, Secret Service leadership actively covered up most of the details of each incident, including outright rejecting one agent’s “excessively detailed” report, in order to avoid upsetting the Biden family.

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CDC Study: Remote Learning Hurt Kids’ Mental Health

When schools pivoted to remote learning amid the COVID-19 pandemic, the first casualty was kids’ mental health.

A new study by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) analyzed teenagers’ mental health from January 2021 to June 2021. Compared with 2019, the study found that the proportion of mental health–related emergency department visits in 2020 increased by about 31% among kids aged 12–17 years.

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Catholic League: Secularists Are ‘Doubting the Resurrection But Not Pregnant Men’

Reflecting on the meaning of Easter, the president of the nation’s largest Catholic civil rights organization, questions how secularists can possibly doubt the Resurrection of Jesus Christ, “but not pregnant men.”

While faith is central to all religions, the Catholic League’s Bill Donohue observes “it is not on faith alone that the account of Jesus’ resurrection is persuasive.”

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Michigan Gov. Whitmer Kidnapping Defense Attorney: ‘FBI Set Men Up’

Eight men face state charges for an alleged plot to kidnap Gov. Gretchen Whitmer. If convicted, the men could serve up to life in prison.

On April 8, a federal jury acquitted two other men on similar charges related to the alleged kidnapping plot. The jury also deadlocked on two accused ringleaders of the plot. The Federal Bureau of Investigation paid informants more than $80,000 of taxpayer money for confidential information.

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Three-Fourths of Americans Say COVID No Longer a Crisis

An overwhelming majority of Americans now believe that the coronavirus crisis has all but passed and is now a much more manageable issue, according to a new poll.

Axios reports that in its latest poll, conducted with Ipsos, only 9 percent of Americans call the coronavirus pandemic “a serious crisis.” Conversely, 73 percent described it as “a problem, but manageable.” Another 17 percent say it is “not a problem at all.” Along party lines, only 3 percent of Republicans called it a “crisis,” in comparison to 16 percent of Democrats; 66 percent of Republicans called it “manageable,” while 81 percent of Democrats said the same. Just 3 percent of Democrats think it is no longer an issue, with 31 percent of Republicans giving the same answer.

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Report: The EU Would Rather Buy Putin’s Oil Than See Le Pen Win France’s Presidency

The European Union has delayed its much-anticipated ban on Russian oil imports to give French President Emmanuel Macron a better chance of winning reelection, The New York Times reported.

The EU embargo, which leaders have reportedly debated behind closed doors for over a month and are currently drafting, is expected after April 24, the date of the second and final round of France’s presidential election, European officials told the NYT. European leaders want to ensure right-wing populist candidate Marine Le Pen isn’t given a polling advantage when gasoline prices rise following a ban announcement, the officials said.

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Poll: Racial and Sexual Curricula in Schools Dividing Americans

According to a new poll, Americans are divided along party lines on the question of whether or not to actively teach about race and sexuality in public schools.

The Associated Press reports that the poll by the University of Chicago, AP, and the NORC Center for Public Affairs Research asked two questions of respondents: Do parents have too little, too much, or about the right amount of influence over what their children learn, and do teachers have too little, too much, or about the right amount of influence in the same area?

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Commentary: Michigan and Pennsylvania Lockdowns Show the High Price of Government Overreach

It’s official, COVID-19 is no longer a crisis. According to a recent Axios poll, only nine percent of Americans believe COVID is a serious crisis. Yet the economic destruction caused by lockdowns lingers. Nowhere is that more obvious than in Michigan and Pennsylvania.

Gov. Gretchen Whitmer and Gov. Tom Wolf wielded immense emergency powers to shut down large parts of the economy, actions unprecedented in the 246-year history of the United States.

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Commentary: The Dystopian Future Where Women—and Men—Just Don’t Want Children

Most of the baby strollers my family observed on vacation in Savannah, Georgia were not transporting babies. Instead, couples perambulated about the city with . . . dogs. By the end of our vacation, we had counted more than 200 different dogs in strollers across the city. Seeing an actual baby in a stroller proved to be the exception, not the rule. 

The U.S. birthrate has fallen by about 20 percent since 2007, and shows no signs of recovering. Among childless adults, 44 percent of those under 50 say it is not too or not at all likely they will ever have children, up from 37 percent who said the same in 2018. 

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Carjackings Soar in Blue State After Democrats Tie Police Officers’ Hands

Carjackings in Washington have soared after Democrats endorsed a rule that limited police pursuits, according to a major police association, King 5 News reported.

Washington recorded an 88% increase in car thefts since 2021, according data compiled by the Washington Association of Sheriffs and Police Chiefs, King 5 reported. The state experienced 12,569 stolen vehicles between January and March 2022, compared to 6,692 thefts during the same time period in 2021.

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Commentary: Restrict Mail-In Voting to Restore Trust

The 2020 U.S. election was unique in many respects, but its chief distinguishing feature is that it occurred during a full-scale pandemic. One consequence was that the election operated under regulations that changed how Americans vote. Some states bent voting rules to expand access. Some resorted to mail-in voting to ensure that everyone who wanted to vote could do so. These actions were, to some extent, understandable, but the resulting conditions were extraordinary, and the dramatic increase in mail-in voting created a major political phenomenon: the blue shift, in which late-counted ballots turn voting outcomes toward the Democrats.

On election night, vote totals initially looked good for President Donald Trump. But as mail-in votes rolled in, central swing states moved into Joe Biden’s column, and Biden won the election. The phenomenon disrupted expectations – and sowed distrust. Many of my Republican family members said, “It didn’t seem right. I knew something was wrong.” Trump, attuned to the emotions of his base, made use of this sentiment. He stoked suspicion that Democrats stole the election. The nightmarish result was the Jan. 6 insurrection.

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Goliad Sheriff: Cartels Are Preparing for Influx of People Never Seen Before in U.S. History

Border Patrol agents and Texas law enforcement officers are bracing for as many as 500,000 illegal immigrants waiting in Mexico to enter Texas in the Rio Grande Valley Sector once Title 42 is lifted, Goliad County Sheriff Roy Boyd told The Center Square in an exclusive interview.

The Rio Grande Valley Sector, one of 20 U.S. Customs and Border Protection sectors, stretches from the Gulf of Mexico south of Brownsville west to the eastern tip of Falcon Lake in Starr County. RGV Sector Border Patrol agents are tasked with patrolling over 320 river miles, 250 coastal miles and 19 counties equating to more than 17,000 square miles in the busiest sector along the southern border.

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‘This Has Gone Too Far’: Transgender Psychologist Reconsiders Work with Trans Youths

Erica Anderson, a transgender psychologist who works with transgender children, criticized the “gender affirming” model of care and said teens were “transitioning” because of peer influence in a Los Angeles Times article Tuesday.

Anderson, who claims to have helped hundreds of teenagers “transition,” has considered leaving the field of transgender child psychology for fear of being associated with the “affirmative approach,” according to the LA Times. The transgender psychologist said some medical practitioners are giving gender-confused children hormones and surgeries without thoroughly evaluating their mental health.

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Biden Action on Gas Prices Will Only Affect 1.5 Percent of Gas Stations, Save Some Americans 10 Cents

President Joe Biden’s recent action to address record-high gasoline prices will have a bare minimum impact on consumers, saving some American families a few dollars a month.

Biden issued an emergency waiver Tuesday allowing gas stations nationwide to sell gasoline with 15% ethanol (E15), pausing a federal environmental regulation that prohibits the corn-based biofuel mixture during the summer months to limit smog. American consumers are currently facing record-high pump prices and soaring inflation at levels not seen since 1981.

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