Month: February 2023

Massachusetts Teachers’ Union Fundraises on GoFundMe to Pay $300K in Illegal Strike Fines

Susan Berry, PhD

The Woburn Teachers Association in Massachusetts, a local affiliate of the National Education Association (NEA) has created a GoFundMe page to solicit cash in order to pay about $300,000 in fines with which it was penalized following an illegal week-long strike beginning January 30.

“Any help would be immensely appreciated!!” the Woburn Teachers Association [WTA] tweeted Wednesday, providing a link to its GoFundMe page. “We have some fines to pay and unfortunately the (bake) sale couldn’t cover it all!!”

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Second New Jersey Republican Councilman Assassinated Within a Week

Michigan Star Staff

On Wednesday, a second Republican city councilman was gunned down in an overt act of political violence, just one week after another Republican city councilwoman was shot and killed outside her home.

As reported by the Washington Free Beacon, Milford councilman Russell Heller was attacked by a former employee in a parking lot outside of his office, and died from his injuries; his killer was later found dead of a suicide. One week prior, Sayreville councilwoman Eunice Dwumfour was shot and killed while sitting in her SUV outside of her home, just 15 miles away from where Heller was killed. Local police, who described Dwumfour’s assassination as a targeted attack, say that her killer is still at large.

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Critics Express Disagreement with ‘Discriminatory’ School Budget Cut Proposal in Michigan

The Center Square

Michigan’s online charter public schools have a 20% decrease in spending in Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s 2023-24 budget proposal.

The second-term Democrat’s fiscal plan unveiled Wednesday includes a 5% increase for traditional public school online teaching.

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Commentary: Righteous Tyrants

Michigan Star Staff

They sure don’t make tyrants like they used to.

Tyrants once rose to power the old-fashioned way: defeating the opposition on the battlefield or at the faux ballot box. Despite their atrocities, these despots at least had some swagger—perhaps a way with the ladies, a good sense of humor, strong persuasive abilities, commanding verbal skills, pride in their appearance.

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Report: Lab-Grown Meat Firms Don’t Know If Their Food Is Safe Long-Term

Michigan Star Staff

Despite leading scientists generally agreeing that lab grown meat is safe to eat, no long-term studies have been conducted to reliably demonstrate this, Bloomberg reported Tuesday.

Lab-grown meat is often made using immortalized cell lines, which, unlike regular cells, are capable of continuously dividing and growing in a manner similar to cancer cells, according to Bloomberg. Companies developing lab-grown meats have largely remained silent about the connection between their product and cancer cells, possibly in a bid to keep consumers from getting skittish about their products.

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Commentary: Stephen Curry’s Housing Hypocrisy

Michigan Star Staff

Stephen Curry is quite the guy. Professional athlete, philanthropist, and social justice advocate—is there anything he can’t do? Apparently there is, seeing as how the NBA player has difficulty practicing what he preaches.

Curry came under fire this week after it was revealed that he and his wife oppose the construction of multifamily housing near their $31 million Atherton mansion. Yet this shouldn’t surprise us. Hypocrisy is a defining trait for many wealthy liberals.

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Commentary: College for Some, Not All

RealClearWire

Over recent decades, parents, grandparents, and high school students have been subject to a barrage of messages suggesting that everyone should go to college. Higher education is the pathway to more money and more status, we’re told.

Few have asked, “Is this path best for all young people, and is it best for our country?” Many young people are not cut out for college, but they have other talents. The vast majority of jobs in this country don’t require a college degree, although many do require additional training.

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Poll: Americans Haven’t Been This Down on Their Personal Finances Since the Great Recession

Michigan Star Staff

Half of Americans say they are financially worse off now than a year ago, one of the few times 50% of Americans have reported being in a worse position since the great recession in 2008, according to a recent poll.

Of 1,011 respondents, 50% said they are worse off when reflecting on their personal financial situations, and only 35% reported being better off now than they were a year ago, according to the Gallup poll released Wednesday. In 2021 and 2022, Americans were evenly divided between 41% to 41% for being better off versus worse off, and in 2020, Americans were three times more likely to say they were better off, 59% to 20%.

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Biden Administration to End Title 42 in May

Michigan Star Staff

On Tuesday, the Biden Administration told the Supreme Court that it still fully intends to end the Title 42 public health rule that heavily limited immigration during the presidency of Donald Trump.

According to the Washington Free Beacon, U.S. Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar revealed in a filing to the court that the administration will formally allow Title 42 to expire in May, around the same time the White House will let the nationwide public health emergency status over COVID-19 end as well.

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Whitmer’s 2024 Budget Eyes $318 Million in Subsidies for Electric Vehicles

The Center Square

Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s proposed $79 billion budget for fiscal year 2024 aims to require taxpayers subsidize electric vehicles and chargers with $318 million.

Whitmer’s mobility budget includes $160 million for capital investments in rail, bus, and marine transit service expansions, $65 million for EV charging stations, and $48 million over two years for an EV sales and use tax exemption.

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Commentary: Boosting Manufacturing in North America

RealClearWire

The world paid little attention when the leaders of North America met in a summit in Mexico City last month, but what they decided was momentous. President Biden, Mexican President Lopez-Obrador and Canadian Prime Minister Trudeau agreed to build on  President Trump’s 2020 trade agreement to find new ways to integrate their economies, boosting manufacturing and significantly reducing reliance on Asia.

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Commentary: Young Men Hold More Conservative Views than Young Women

Michigan Star Staff

A favorite argument the left propagates is that demographics are destiny, and that a tidal wave of young left-wing voters will erode GOP margins beyond repair. The argument that demographics are destiny is of course inescapable, but the argument that these demographics favor the left exclusively is misleading.       

What the data shows is there have been small but discernible shifts away from the Democrat Party over the past few years. The bulk of the research on younger voters also shows a widening gender gap. Younger women are becoming increasingly liberal and younger men are not. Recent research shows that younger men hold more conservative views than older men on gender issues, including the transgender question.  

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Fauci Paper Suggests Feds Knew COVID Vaccines Were Doomed from the Start: ‘Decidedly Suboptimal’

Just the News

Anthony Fauci knows why COVID-19 vaccines have been so unreliable at halting infection and transmission beyond a few months. He waited until he stepped down as director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases to publicly explain it. Elsevier’s medical journal Cell Host and Microbe published a “perspective” led by Fauci’s office last month that shows NIAID had good reason to believe COVID vaccines would fail even before they were authorized, based on research spanning Fauci’s 38-year tenure leading NIAID.

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Commentary: Disney Has It All

Admin

Gone are the days when parents could turn on the Disney Channel or a Disney movie and walk away. A new 50-minute documentary called Walt’s Disenchanted Kingdom exposes the radical agenda pushed by Disney to indoctrinate America’s children. “Once upon a time, if it was a Disney movie, you knew it was going to be safe for children,” Media Research Center founder and President L. Brent Bozell III states at the beginning of this revealing documentary.

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Texas AG Sues Biden Admin over HHS Guidance Forcing Pharmacies to Carry Abortion Pills

Admin

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton filed a lawsuit against President Joe Biden’s Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Tuesday over the agency’s guidance mandating pharmacies provide abortion pills regardless of state law. The HHS issued the guidance in July 2022, citing federal anti-discrimination law and threatening to pull Medicaid and Medicare funds from pharmacies that do not comply. The lawsuit argues that the guidance contradicts the Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, which found no constitutional right to an abortion and kicked the ability to pass regulations back to the state level.

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Report: China Has More ICBM Launchers than U.S.

Admin

A new report from the United States military asserts that China is now in possession of more land-based intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) launchers than the U.S., further reflecting China’s ongoing military escalations as part of its quest to become a superpower. The New York Post reports that the Armed Services Committees in both houses of Congress were notified of this development on January 26th by General Anthony Cotton, the commander of U.S. Strategic Command. However, even despite having more launchers, the U.S. still has more ICBM missiles, whereas many of the Chinese launchers are empty. The U.S. also maintains superiority over China in the size of its nuclear fleet, despite China’s continuing efforts to increase the size of its own nuclear arsenal.

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Biden’s State of Union Message Gets Counter-Programmed by His Own Administration and Policies

Just the News

It’s a time-honored tradition in Washington for a president to deliver his State of the Union address and frame his successes and policy vision before allowing the opposition party to offer its rebuttal. But Joe Biden upended the tradition, somehow delivering the counter-programming to his own message Tuesday with a series of negative headlines generated by his own administration. In the hours before Biden spoke from the U.S. Capitol, his administration announced the nation had suffered its worst trade deficit in history last year at nearly $1 trillion. Shortly thereafter, his Fed chairman warned inflation was not abating as expected and would be sticking around longer because of a tight labor market that produced an unexpected 500,000-plus jobs in January.

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Republicans Say Biden Lied About Their Position on Social Security, Medicare to Scare Seniors

Just the News

Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene wasn’t alone Tuesday night in openly arguing President Biden in his State of the Union address misstated House Republicans’ position on the future of Medicare and Social Security. “I think, because he lied, it was a frustration,” Kentucky GOP Rep. Thomas Massie told Just the News after Biden’s roughly 72-minute address.

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New Poll Shows Overwhelming Disapproval of Biden’s Handling of Spy Balloon Affair

M.D. Kittle

While he made time to attack Republicans during Tuesday’s State of the Union address, President Joe Biden failed to note his handling of the Chinese spy balloon affair. A new poll might just explain why the Democrat avoided the topic.

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Black Lives Matter at School ‘Week of Action’ Gives Leftist Teachers Free Rein to Push Social Justice Activism in K-12 Schools

Susan Berry, PhD

Radical Marxist teachers are celebrating Black Lives Matter at School’s (BLM at School) “Week of Action” February 6-10 in thousands of K-12 government schools. The national BLM at School movement spends the first week of February – named as Black History Month – “organizing for racial justice in education,” its website touts.

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Border Patrol Presentation Reveals Plan to Release Illegal Crossers En Masse into U.S. Communities

The Center Square

Roughly six weeks before testifying Tuesday before the House Committee on Oversight and Accountability, Chief Border Patrol Agent Gloria Chavez held a meeting with local law enforcement in Weslaco, Texas, describing the administration’s plan to release en masse illegal foreign nationals into the U.S. when Title 42 ended. 

The Biden administration sought to end Title 42, the public health authority first implemented under the Trump administration during the height of the pandemic, but Texas sued and in December a federal court prevented the administration from ending it.

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U.S. Notches Record Trade Deficit in 2022

Michigan Star Staff

The U.S. trade deficit increased to its highest recorded level in 2022, thanks in part to a surging trade deficit with China.

The U.S. registered a roughly $948.1 billion goods and services deficit for the year, including a $382.9 billion goods deficit to China, the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) revealed Tuesday. This 12.2% surge over 2021 marks an all-time U.S. trade deficit record, The Wall Street Journal reported.

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Tennessee Veterinary School Puts Emphasis on Diversity, Equity and Inclusion, Watchdog Finds

Michigan Star Staff

A Tennessee veterinary school engaged in programs to bolster commitment to Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI), according to medical watchdog group Do No Harm.

Faculty at Lincoln Memorial University- Richard A. Gillespie College of Veterinary Medicine (LMU CVM)  attended a January workshop titled “Inclusivity” to learn about incorporating diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging (DEIB) in the workplace, according to a tip sent to Do No Harm. Its masters program partnered BLEND, a certification program, to train veterinarians in DEIB.

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Commentary: DeSantis, Inc. Underestimates Donald Trump

Michigan Star Staff

The 2024 Republican presidential primary has hardly begun, but a consensus has already formed in conservative media that Donald Trump is toxic and unelectable. This narrative, commonplace but seldom challenged, is being pushed aggressively by pundits who are obviously partial to Florida governor Ron DeSantis. Many of these personalities insist that Trump has an obligation to step aside, and they pretend that Trump is attacking DeSantis unprovoked, despite the governor’s obvious intentions to run.

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Georgia Rep. Greene Seeks Probe on Why Trump Not Told About Previous Spy Balloons

Just the News

Georgia Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene on Monday called for an investigation into former President Donald Trump’s ignorance of prior aerial incursions by Chinese spy balloons that the Biden administration alleges occurred during his time in office.

Greene indicated that the president would have likely been aware of such events had they transpired and suggested his professed ignorance of such balloon activities may indicate that the Pentagon withheld security information from the commander-in-chief.

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Fake Meat Industry Implodes After Years of Hype

Michigan Star Staff

The meat substitute market is collapsing after its meteoric rise, with key players in the industry facing massive layoffs and plummeting sales.

Fake meat products like Beyond Meat and Impossible Foods, which advertise themselves as healthy and environmentally friendly alternatives to meat, soared to national popularity in 2019 when they began selling their products with massive fast food chains. Impossible Foods was moving toward laying off 20% of its staff in late January just months after its competitor, Beyond Meat, announced plans to cut a fifth of its own workforce, according to Bloomberg.

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Commentary: Missing Documents and Files in Ongoing January 6 Cover-Ups

Michigan Star Staff
Capitol Riot

The public is gradually learning how, despite repeated denials and non-answers, top government officials were well aware of the potential for violence on January 6, 2021. 

A chief investigator on the January 6 select committee told NBC News last week that law enforcement was privy to a trove of intelligence indicating problems could arise during the election certification process but, for some unexplained reason, chose to ignore the warning signs. “The Intel in advance was pretty specific, and it was enough in our view for law enforcement to have done a better job operationalizing a secure perimeter.” Tim Heaphy told NBC News reporter Ken Dilanian. “Law enforcement had a very direct role in contributing to surely the failures—the security failures that led to the violence.”

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US Tech Giants Funding China’s Race to Supremacy in AI

Just the News

A recently leaked memo from Gen. Mike Minihan, the head of the U.S. Air Mobility Command (AMC), suggested that, within the next two years, the U.S. would be at war with China over Taiwan.  

“I hope I am wrong,” wrote the four-star general, before adding that his gut feeling is that “we will fight in 2025.” The leaked memo comes at a time when, according to a recent article in The Economist, tensions between the U.S. and China are at an all-time high — a conclusion amply reinforced by recent headlines about the test of wills between the two nations over a Chinese spy balloon the Pentagon believes was overflying sensitive U.S. military sites. 

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Fatherless Children, Dangerous Cities: Numbers Confirm Deep Roots of Urban Crime Epidemic

Just the News

As Just the News recently reported, the U.S. is now home to 11 of the top 50 most dangerous cities in the world.  All 11, as the piece noted, are governed by Democratic mayors. All 11 also have Democratic district attorneys.

Permissive criminal justice policies are widely thought to be large factors driving such grim statistics. Dig a little deeper, however, and an even more important cause of the crime epidemic plaguing blue cities comes into sharp focus: Many of these cities are also home to a staggering percentage of single-parent households, the great majority of which are headed by single mothers.

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Simon Conway Guest Host Matt Kittle Talks to Kari Lake About Upcoming Event in Iowa and America First Policies

JCarr

Live from Des Moines Tuesday morning on The Simon Conway Show with Matt Kittle – broadcast on Des Moines, Iowas, 1040 WHO (4p-7p weekdays) or in the Quad Cities on 1420 WOC (4 p.m.-6p.m. weekdays) – guest host Kittle welcomed former Arizona Governor candidate Kari Lake to the show to promote her upcoming event in Iowa and America First policies.

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‘Trans Lives Matter’ Activists Occupy Oklahoma Capitol Building to Protest Protecting Minor Children from Life-Altering Transgender Drugs and Surgeries

Susan Berry, PhD

Transgender rights activists occupied the Oklahoma Capitol building Monday to protest Republican-led proposed legislation that would protect minor children and teens from life-altering hormone drugs and surgeries, the consequences of which they may not fully comprehend until they are adults. The protesters, many from LGBTQ activist groups Oklahomans for Equality and Freedom Oklahoma, descended upon the Capitol building and into the rotunda, where they proceeded to chant loudly.

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Community Tortured by Prostitutes Soliciting Sex Outside California Catholic Elementary School

Susan Berry, PhD

Parents and parish school officials in East Oakland, California, are desperate for police assistance as scantily-clad young prostitutes solicit sex along the sidewalk of St. Anthony’s K-8 elementary school.

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Chinese Nationals Have Bought Thousands of Acres of Strategically Located U.S. Farmland

Admin

Ownership of U.S. farmland by Chinese nationals has risen significantly in the last decade and amounted to 338,000 acres as of 2020, according to U.S. Agriculture Department data.

Since 2010, Chinese nationals have reportedly purchased an additional 75,000 acres of U.S. farmland, according to U.S. Agriculture Department data obtained by the WSJ. Although amounting to less than 1% of all U.S. agricultural land held by foreign citizens, ownership of U.S. farmland by Chinese nationals has received increased scrutiny in recent years following warnings from U.S. government officials claiming that the Chinese government may seek to use land for military and espionage purposes, according to the WSJ.

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Google Debuts ‘Bard,’ an AI Competitor to ChatGPT

Just the News

Big Tech giant Google on Monday announced Bard, the company’s new artificial intelligence product, in a bid to compete with ChatGPT.

“We’ve been working on an experimental conversational AI service, powered by LaMDA, that we’re calling Bard,” reads a blog post from the company. “And today, we’re taking another step forward by opening it up to trusted testers ahead of making it more widely available to the public in the coming weeks.

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Popular AI Less Likely to Flag ‘Hateful Content’ That Targets Whites, Republicans, Men, Research Finds

Admin

OpenAI, the company behind the headline-grabbing artificial intelligence chatbot ChatGPT, has an automated content moderation system designed to flag hateful speech, but the software treats speech differently depending on which demographic groups are insulted, according to a study conducted by research scientist David Rozado.

The content moderation system used in ChatGPT and other OpenAI products is designed to detect and block hate, threats, self-harm and sexual comments about minors, according to Rozado. The researcher fed various prompts to ChatGPT involving negative adjectives ascribed to various demographic groups based on race, gender, religion and various other markers and found that the software favors some demographic groups over others.

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Michigan Bill Aims to Ease Substitute Teaching Requirements

The Center Square

A bill introduced in Lansing aims to make it easier for Michigan schools to hire substitute teachers.

State Rep. Brad Paquette, R-Niles, introduced House Bill 4038, which aims to allow a district employee to substitute teach under certain conditions, without having 60 college credits.

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Florida Democrat Admits Taking Daughter to Drag Shows: ‘Just Folx Dancing in Cute Outfits’

Susan Berry, PhD

A Florida Democrat lawmaker who admitted in a Twitter post Saturday she takes her teenage daughter to drag shows condemned Governor Ron DeSantis’s (R) move to revoke the liquor license of an Orlando venue that allowed minors to attend drag show performances.

State Representative Angie Nixon (D-Jacksonville), who self-describes as a “community organizer,” denied the sexual nature of drag shows, claiming, instead, the issue is one of “parental rights,” whereby parents can decide to take their children to these performances.

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Few Democrats Want Biden to Run Again in 2024: Poll

The Center Square

Heading into President Joe Biden’s State of the Union Address Tuesday, his own party has little desire for a second Biden term, according to a new poll.

The poll, released Monday by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research, reports that only 37 percent of Democrats want Biden to run for a re-election.

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Commentary: The Unacceptable Cost of Open-Border Mission Creep

Admin

One of the pitfalls of political extremism is that a few bad foundational ideas beget a host of even worse ideas and results. Such is the case with our immigration crisis, as what began with faculty lounge bull sessions has become accepted government policy that now threatens America’s future.

The idea that America’s borders should be softened to the point that any noncitizen could enter the country on his own terms was always problematic. From that flawed logic has come an intricate web of problems that most in our government have no will, no courage, and no competence to repair.

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Commentary: Legalized Sports Betting Has Transformed the Fan Experience

Admin

A couple of days before Christmas, I went to see the NHL’s Nashville Predators play on their home ice against the defending Stanley Cup champion Colorado Avalanche.

Amid all the silliness of a modern pro sports experience – the home team skating out of a giant saber-toothed tiger head, the mistletoe kiss cam, a small rock band playing seasonal hits between periods – there was a steady stream of advertising for DraftKings, a company known as a sportsbook that takes bets on athletic events and pays out winnings.

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South Carolina Moves to Take the Top Spot in Democratic Presidential Politics

The Center Square

The Democratic National Committee has approved a calendar that makes South Carolina the party’s first primary for the 2024 election.

The move follows an endorsement from President Joe Biden, whose win in the state’s 2020 Democratic primary was integral to his securing the Democratic nomination.

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Bannon: Biden Must Be Impeached ‘As Soon As Possible’ for Lying About Chinese Spy Balloon

JCarr

Live from Virginia Monday morning on The John Fredericks Show, host Fredericks welcomed Stephen K. Bannon to comment on the cover-up of the Chinese spy balloon that traversed the entire continental United States and the corruption of the Biden regime.

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Chinese Companies with Links to CCP Buying American Private Schools with ROTC Programs, Florida U.S. Rep. Mike Waltz Warns

Susan Berry, PhD

Companies with ties to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) are purchasing private schools with junior ROTC [Reserve Officers’ Training Corps] programs and military academies in the United States, warns Representative Mike Waltz (R-FL).

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‘Disgraceful’: Associated Press Directs Journalists Not to Use ‘Crisis Pregnancy Center’ in New Abortion Guidance

Admin

The Associated Press added an entry to its style guide directing journalists to put the term “crisis pregnancy center” in scare-quotes, and to use “anti-abortion center” instead, to convey that “the centers’ general aim is to prevent abortions.” 

The AP added this entry between Nov. 20 and Nov. 27, 2022, according to The Daily Signal’s search of the Wayback Machine. The guide describes the centers as “set up to divert or discourage women from having abortions” and warns writers against “potentially misleading terms” like “pregnancy resource centers or pregnancy counseling centers.”  

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GOP to Investigate John Kerry’s Secret Negotiations with Chinese Communist Party

Admin

Congressman James Comer (R-Ky.), Chairman of the House Oversight and Accountability Committee, will be directly probing secret negotiations held between John Kerry and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).

As reported by Fox News, Comer sent a letter to Kerry on Thursday informing the Biden official that Comer himself would be investigating the matter. Kerry, a failed presidential candidate and former Massachusetts Senator, was named Biden’s Special Presidential Envoy for the Climate (SPEC) at the start of Biden’s term; the position of SPEC was created specifically for Kerry.

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Chinese Students Running Distribution for Drug Cartels: Former DEA Official

Just the News

Former Drug Enforcement Agency Special Operations Director Derek Maltz Sr. on Friday outlined the involved of Chinese college students entering the U.S. on student visas in distributing drugs on behalf of various cartels.

Speaking on the “Just the News, No Noise” television show, Maltz highlighted the severity of the crisis, lamenting that “kids are dying left and right.”

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Proposal Would Send Inflation Relief Checks to Michiganders

The Center Square

All Michigan taxpayers will get inflation relief checks and retirees will average four-figure savings in a plan Michigan’s top Democrats say answers the call for helping families.

The size of those relief checks wasn’t announced. 

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