Day: June 15, 2023

Prominent Trans Activist Jailed For Murdering Entire Family: ‘Most Depraved Crime I Ever Handled’

Michigan Star Staff

Dana Rivers, a longtime transgender activist, was sentenced to life in prison Wednesday for the 2016 murder of a lesbian couple and their son.

Rivers garnered national fame in 1999 for suing the Center Unified School District in Sacramento and winning a $150,000 settlement after being fired for talking to students about transitioning genders, according to Mercury News. Rivers attacked two women, aged 56 and 57, in their bed as they slept, shooting both women and their 19-year old son before stabbing one of the women 47 times and setting their garage on fire.

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Texas Gov Abbott Signs Bills Banning DEI in Public Higher Education, Reforms Tenure

The Center Square

Gov. Greg Abbott on Wednesday signed two bills into law designed to reform public higher education institutions in Texas. One bans them from implementing DEI policies and another revises the tenure structure. 

Both bills, authored by Sen. Brandon Creighton, R-Conroe, passed the legislature during the regular legislative session. Senate Bill 17 bans public colleges and universities from implementing diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) policies that prioritize gender, race, ethnicity and ideological beliefs as factors for hiring or admission policies. Earlier this year, Gov. Abbott’s chief of staff sent a letter to public higher education institutions and state agencies saying if they were implementing DEI policies, they were violating federal law. In response, the heads of Texas colleges and universities said they were “pausing” and reviewing their DEI policies. The new law requires them to terminate them.

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Medicaid Emergency Spending for Illegal Migrants Doubles in One Year to $7 Billion: GOP House

Just the News

Medicaid emergency spending for illegal immigrants more than doubled from fiscal year 2020 to fiscal year 2021, according to House Homeland Security Committee Chairman Mark Green.

During a congressional hearing Wednesday on Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas’ job performance, Green said more people have entered the U.S. illegally under his roughly two-year tenure “than in the 12 years of the Obama and Trump administrations combined.”

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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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Largest Catholic Health Network Hospitals Providing Puberty Blockers to Minors and Gender Transition Surgeries: Report

Susan Berry, PhD

A watchdog organization dedicated to the defense of the Catholic Church released a report Sunday that claims the largest Catholic health system in the United States is “acting directly against Catholic moral teaching in direct defiance of its Catholic identity.”

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Majority of Americans Believe Biden Family Took Foreign Influence Payments: Report

Michigan Star Staff

Over half of American voters believe that the Biden family has accepted payments from foreign nationals in order to influence politics in Washington D.C., according to a new poll from the Convention of States Action and the Trafalgar Group.

President Joe Biden’s son, Hunter Biden, is currently the subject of a House Oversight Committee investigation which is looking into his conduct and business transactions while overseas during his time on the board of the Ukrainian company Burisma. According to a new poll released Wednesday, 53.3% of respondents believed that the Biden family had accepted bribes from foreign officials, while 34% indicated that they believed in the family’s innocence.

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Report: Intelligence Agencies Buying ‘Sensitive and Intimate’ Data of American Citizens

Michigan Star Staff

A recently-declassified report alleges that multiple U.S. intelligence agencies have been actively “flouting the law” by gathering massive collections of “sensitive and intimate” data on American citizens.

According to the New York Post, the claims were made in a report to Director of National Intelligence (DNI) Avril Haines, which was only recently declassified and is now being amplified by watchdog groups and privacy advocates. The report details a loophole that has allowed intelligence agencies, including the FBI, DHS, and NSA, to simply buy large troves of cell phone data for tracking purposes without needing a warrant.

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Today’s Youth List TikTok, Instagram Influencers as Most Trusted Sources of News

Michigan Star Staff

A new report reveals that the youngest generations of today are more likely to trust news they receive from social media influencers rather than from actual news outlets and reporters.

As Fox News reports, the study was conducted by the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism out of the University of Oxford. The survey found that 55 percent of TikTok users get their news from “personalities” on the platform, with another 52 percent of respondents saying the same thing for Instagram influencers.

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Democrats Team Up with Anti-Trump Republicans to Crush Third-Party Org: Report

Michigan Star Staff

Democratic strategists and allies of President Joe Biden met with conservatives who oppose former President Donald Trump in Washington, D.C. last week to fight the centrist group No Labels’ third-party ticket in 2024, according to The Washington Post.

No Labels has been planning to run a third-party “unity ticket” in the event of a rematch between Trump and Biden in 2024, as the organization believes the two men represent the most extreme ends of their respective parties. As No Labels continues their efforts to gain ballot access in key states, the June 6 meeting attendees worry that such a ticket could take away votes from Biden and enable Trump to win a second term, according to the Post.

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Committee Says Prospective Michigan Plant’s Farmland Purchase Not in Its Jurisdiction

The Center Square

Local and national efforts to stymie the building of an electric vehicle battery components plant in Michigan were dealt another setback on Tuesday.

The U.S. Committee on Foreign Investment declared that the purchase of farmland in Big Rapids by Gotion was not within its jurisdiction. Opponents of the $2.4 billion plant have protested ties by its parent company to China and raised concerns about the environment.

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Commentary: Trump’s Indictment and the Collapse of Confidence in Our Institutions

RealClearWire

Democracies cannot thrive – and may not survive – when citizens lose confidence in their basic institutions. That is exactly what is happening in America today. This loss of confidence and a bitter ideological divide are our country’s most profound challenges. Those challenges form the essential backdrop for understanding the controversy surrounding Donald Trump’s indictment.

Before turning to the charges facing Trump, consider their larger political setting, which begins with any democratic government’s most fundamental responsibilities: preserving public order, ensuring its citizens’ safety, and applying the law fairly. The institutions charged with those responsibilities are crumbling at the local, state, and federal levels, and millions of voters on both sides of our gaping ideological spectrum know it. Each blames the other and accepts no blame for themselves.

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Commentary: The EPA’s Proposed Carbon Capture and Storage Regulations Is a Trial Lawyer’s Dream

RealClearWire

In May, the US Environmental Protection Agency proposed new regulations that will require power plants to capture almost all their CO2 emissions, compress them, transport them via a network of pipelines, and store them underground. The plan is economic folly, but the problems go beyond money: CO2 injected underground may well escape into the atmosphere or contaminate underground water supplies, either of which could yield deadly results and create a feeding frenzy of litigation. The liability risks will be another nail in the coffin for the country’s reliance on fossil fuels to supply electricity, which in 2022 accounted for about 60% of all generation.     

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Watchdog: Feds Wasted $683 Million Per Day in Improper Payments in 2022

The Center Square

The federal government wasted over a half a trillion dollars in improper payments during the first two years of the Biden administration, a new analysis from a spending watchdog group found.

The analysis comes from Open The Books, which reports that 82 programs across 17 agencies made improper payments in fiscal year 2022 alone, averaging $20.5 billion per month, or $683 million per day.

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Movement to Decide Presidency by Popular Vote Gains States, Momentum But Also Faces Challenges

Just the News

The effort to change how the United States elects its presidents – from the existing Electoral College process to a national popular vote – is gaining momentum, but critics are questioning its legality and whether it improves the country’s election system. 

Sixteen states and Washington, D.C., have joined the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact, with Minnesota being the latest and Michigan and Nevada considering it.

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Biden DHS Rewards Sanctuary Cities, NGOs with $290 Million

Michigan Star Staff

The Biden Administration’s Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has awarded over $290 million in taxpayer money to various “sanctuary cities,” as well as pro-illegal alien non-governmental organizations (NGOs).

As reported by Breitbart, the nearly $300 million was taken from the Shelter and Services Program (SSP), a federal initiative that is funded by the U.S. Congress. The money was divided among 34 different cities, NGOs, and other entities.

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USDA to Crack Down on False Labeling in Meat and Poultry Industry

The Center Square

The U.S. Department of Agriculture will be cracking down on false claims on labeling of meat claiming it is “grass-fed,” “free-range,” “raised without antibiotics,” or “no antibiotics ever.”

The USDA’s Food Safety and Inspection Service has received petitions, comments and letters asking the agency to boost oversight of marketing claims made by the meat and poultry industry, the agency said Wednesday in a news release. The agency will then determine if it needs to do more rulemaking on the industry’s claims.

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Ohio U.S. Senator JD Vance Vows to Block Biden’s DOJ Nominees until Garland Stops ‘Harassing’ Political Opponents

Just the News

Sen. J.D. Vance says he is going to place holds on all of President Joe Biden’s Justice Department nominees following former President Donald Trump’s federal indictment for his handling of classified materials.

Vance, an Ohio Republican, wrote Tuesday on Twitter that he will halt all Justice nominees until Attorney General Merrick Garland “stops using his agency to harass Joe Biden’s political opponents.”

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