Voter Accuracy Program Going Statewide in Ohio

Editor 1
-
0
Voter Accuracy Program Going Statewide in Ohio

(, The Center Square) A pilot program targeting the accuracy of voter rolls in Ohio is now going statewide.

Secretary of State Frank LaRose recently announced a new voter-data integrity program that began in six counties and is now going statewide. The program uses county-specific digital dashboards to help identify voter-registration discrepancies.

“These data entry discrepancies are not commonly indicative of fraud or irregularities, but they must be resolved in order to comply with our shared statutory responsibility to maintain the accuracy of the statewide voter registration database,” LaRose said.

As previously reported, LaRose spokesman Ben Kindel told the Center Square the dashboard is another tool local officials will use during regular list-maintenance processes, which happen daily and weekly. Before the dashboard was created, local boards managed their systems.

Kindel also said most voter-registration errors come when officials mistakenly hit the wrong keyboard stroke when updating forms or improper transcriptions from hand-filled registration forms.

The dashboards give county boards of election access to dashboards that show the number of registration records flagged for potential errors, such as illegal characters in name fields, placeholder birth dates, unreasonably high ages and improper birth/registration date combinations.

Mistakes were often the result of information being manually entered into the state’s database from handwritten forms over the years.

“Many of Ohio’s registration records have been manually entered into the system from a handwritten form, which can sometimes lead to data entry errors,” LaRose said.

“This innovative tool will help every county election office to clear up these issues more effectively, and I look forward to building on the success of the pilot program as we get ready for the November election,” he added.

With the new dashboards, election officials are now required to review and fix errors that include prohibited name characters, placeholder birth dates, registration before birth and registration under 17 years old.

Cost of July 4 Cookout Hits Record High as Bidenflation Persists

Editor 1
-
0
Cost of July 4 Cookout Hits Record High as Bidenflation Persists

(, The Center Square) As families across America celebrated the 4th of July, they faced stubbornly high prices at the grocery store.

According to a survey from the American Farm Bureau Federation, hosting an Independence Day cookout for 10 guests will cost $71.22 this year.

The grocery bill has spiked by 5% from last year and has soared by nearly 30% in just five years, according to the bureau.

Each guest at the cookout will bear a record high cost of $7.12, which is the highest since the survey’s initiation in 2013.

The increase in food prices is part of an overall spike in prices since President Joe Biden took office and inflation, fueled in part by debt spending, put Americans in a pinch.

“Higher prices at the grocery store reflect a number of challenges facing America’s families,” AFBF chief economist Roger Cryan said in a statement. “Lower availability of some cookout staples and inflation are hitting people in their wallets.”

Cryan highlighted that farmers, who must sell at market prices, are facing elevated fuel, fertilizer, and supply prices despite only receiving 15% of the retail food dollar.

In other words, American farmers receive a relatively small portion of return for the food products they sell, while bearing a heavy burden of rising costs.

“It’s crucial that as we celebrate the holiday we also urge members of Congress to return to Washington and pass a new, modernized five-year farm bill,” AFBF President Zippy Duvall said. “We cannot afford more delays and short-term extensions.”

The survey revealed a double-digit increase in the cost of beef and lemonade compared to the previous year, while prices for chicken breasts and potato salad have seen a decrease.

Ground beef prices surged by 11% to $12.77 for 2 pounds, and lemonade costs spiked by 12% to $4.19.

Factors such as drought conditions and citrus greening have contributed to these price hikes, reflecting the challenges farmers confront regularly, according to the Farm Bureau.

The survey identified two exceptions to the overall price increases.

Chicken prices are down by 4% from last year, priced at $7.83 for 2 pounds, and potato salad is 4% cheaper at $3.32. The bureau says that stability in chicken supplies and favorable potato crop conditions have led to these declines in prices.

REPORT: Biden’s White House Spending Dwarfs Trump, Obama

Editor 1
-
0
REPORT: Biden’s White House Spending Dwarfs Trump, Obama

(, The Center Square) President Joe Biden’s White House staff has grown to historic highs, costing taxpayers tens of millions of dollars, according to a new report.

An analysis from OpenTheBooks of the recently released White House payroll found the Biden White House staff spending has hit new highs.

“During President Joe Biden’s four years, he spent $225 million on the largest White House payroll since at least 1971, based on headcount,” the report said.

Those costs include $60.8 million for 565 employees. The group noted a 77% turnover rate since 2021 and that first lady Jill Biden increased the size of her office from 20 to 24 employees, a number not matched since first lady Michelle Obama in 2009.

In 2020, first lady Melania Trump had 11 staffers.

“The White House contains more staff than at any time since the Nixon era, when TIME Magazine said headcount with growing with ‘startling rapidity,'” OpenTheBooks founder and CEO Adam Andrzejewski said in a statement. “At $60.8 million, this White House staff is the most expensive since OpenTheBooks.com began tracking the numbers in 2009.”

Notably, Biden’s staff outpaces his recent predecessors of both parties.

“Biden employs 152 more staffers than Trump (413) (FY2020) and 97 more than Obama (468) (FY2012) at the same point in their respective presidencies,” the group said.

The federal government as a whole has grown under Biden’s watch, not just the White House.

“During Biden’s first three years, more than 40,000 bureaucrats were added to the federal payroll across the 123 executive agencies, outside of the Department of Defense, U.S. Post Office, and intelligence services,” the report said. “In the first nine days of his presidency, Biden issued many executive orders expanding the size, scope, and power of the federal bureaucracy.”

Gavin Newsom Runs False Ad Blaming Guns for Kids’ Deaths

Editor 1
-
0
Gavin Newsom Runs False Ad Blaming Guns for Kids’ Deaths

(, The Center Square) California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s super PAC “Campaign for Democracy” is running an ad on X, formerly known as Twitter, that reads, “Guns are the number one killer of kids. Not cancer. Not car accidents. GUNS.”

The claim is false for most Americans.

 

It is true that firearms are the No. 1 killer of kids according to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data if you include adult 18- and 19-year-olds as “kids” and exclude kids younger than 1, but even then for 82% of Americans it is false.

Gun are not the No. 1 killer of whites or Hispanics or Asians or Native Americans.

Only for African-Americans is the number true, according to a May 2024 article in the Journal of the American Medical Association titled “Racial and Ethnic Disparities in All-Cause and Cause-Specific Mortality Among US Youth.” Newsom cites a “Pediatrics” article using 2011 through 2021 data for his claim.

The JAMA article reads, “By mechanism, the leading cause of death for Black youth was firearm injuries, whereas the leading cause of death for American Indian or Alaska Native, Hispanic, and White youth was MVCs [motor-vehicle crashes] (Table). Asian or Pacific Islander youth were most likely to die from MVC …”

The false ad is part of an effort to raise Newsom’s profile nationally and build support for a quixotic effort to amend the Constitution to allow greater gun control. Newsom’s political office did not respond to multiple emails including a link to the JAMA article and seeking comment.

DHS’s CISA Simulates Mass Shooting

Ken Silva
-
0
DHS’s CISA Simulates Mass Shooting

(Ken Silva, Headline USA) The agency in charge of fortifying the 2020 election is now apparently trying to protect schools from mass shootings.

The Homeland Security Department’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, or CISA, announced last week that it held “a full-scale active shooter/reunification exercise” at Kettle Run High School and Greenville Elementary School in Virginia.

According to CISA, the drill involved a simulation of an active shooter scenario to evaluate and improve emergency response strategies. The exercise also purportedly focused on the reunification of affected students with local law enforcement, school administrators, teachers, and emergency medical services.

“The lessons we learn during joint exercises like this one underscore the critical importance of collaboration between federal, state, and local entities in ensuring the safety of our schools,” CISA’s David Mussington said.

“By working closely with Fauquier County Public Schools and the County Sheriff’s Office and Fire Rescue System, we are better equipped to protect students and educators from potential threats.”

CISA has apparently been focusing on school shootings since 2022, according to its website. DHS Secretary Alejandro N. Mayorkas and CISA Director Jen Easterly were at the inaugural National Summit on K-12 School Safety and Security  in October 2022.

Along with school shootings and election issues, CISA is also one of the government agencies that pressured social media platforms to censor content in 2020 via a shadowy network of academic agencies and government-funded organizations.

CISA created the “Election Integrity Partnership,” which was a  a consortium of “disinformation” academics led by Stanford University’s Stanford Internet Observatory.

According to the congressional findings, the EIP would generate “misinformation reports,” which the DHS would then present to social media companies to encourage them to censor certain content.

The DHS would tell the social media companies that they are under no legal obligation to act on the report’s recommendations. But the DHS would also warn that the misinformation reports might be provided to other law enforcement agencies.

Ken Silva is a staff writer at Headline USA. Follow him at twitter.com/jd_cashless.

Biden’s Title IX Rewrite Threatened by Post-‘Chevron’ Legal Landscape

Editor 1
-
0
Biden’s Title IX Rewrite Threatened by Post-‘Chevron’ Legal Landscape

(, The Center Square) President Joe Biden’s attempt to re-interpret Title IX and thereby implement a sweeping LGBT agenda at schools around the country may be put on hold after a few key court rulings.

The Biden administration’s overhaul of Title IX is set to take effect Aug. 1, but a flurry of court decisions in recent weeks may be enough for critics to stop the changes before they fully take effect.

One of those cases included a win for Moms for Liberty, a group that successfully sued the Department of Education and obtained an order this week blocking the enforcement of the Title IX changes in several states.

“…This is now the third federal court to formally enjoin the final title nine rule- but remember that two federal courts have now enjoined the informal guidance that led to the rule,” Sarah Perry, a legal expert at the Heritage Foundation, told the Center Square.

“That brings the total to 14 states shielded from the rule’s enforcement on August 1,” she added. “But that does NOT include ‘every school in which Moms For liberty member has a child.’ That organization has members in every state across the country except three.”

This battle began when the Biden administration began redefining the meaning and purpose of Title IX across several agencies. Title IX is a law that was originally passed in 1972 to, among other things, create legal protections for women to have equal access to school locker rooms, sports teams, etc in K-12 schools and colleges.

When Biden took office, however, his regulators decided to reinterpret the protections based on “sex” in Title IX to also include gender identity and sexuality.

Now, under the Biden administration’s changes, schools that do not embrace transgender athletes, similar bathroom policies and more would lose federal funding.

Recently, though, several federal courts have pushed back on the changes. At the same time, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled last month in Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo to overturn “Chevron deference,” a key legal framework that essentially gave federal regulators broad power to enforce and interpret laws passed by Congress as they thought best.

Under the Supreme Court’s new ruling, agencies have far less power to interpret laws as they see fit. While the battle over Chevron deference largely centered around energy and environmental questions, the long-awaited ruling happened to come just in time to apply to the Title IX changes.

Critics of Biden’s controversial rules change—which effectively subverted the original intention of Title IX to mean the opposite of what it intended—say rewrite is exactly the reason why Chevron deference needed to be overturned.

Perry said that the Chevron changes mean the U.S. Supreme Court will probably review the Title IX changes.

“In short, 5 Federal Court victories in such a short amount of time nearly guarantee Supreme Court review, and now that Chevron is overturned, the administration is in real trouble as concerns the viability of the rule,” Perry told the Center Square.

Now, a legal battle that has been brewing for a long time may finally come to a head.

“Even without the Supreme Court decisions in Loper Bright and relentless, over-reaching regulations like President Biden’s Title IX rule have faced intensive scrutiny from the courts, with three federal courts issuing preliminary injunctions against the Title IX rule in the last several weeks,” said Bob Eitel, president and co-founder of the Defense of Freedom Institute.

“With the reversal of Chevron, when faced with ambiguous language in a statute, judges may now use their independent judgment to interpret a law without deferring to the Education Department’s regulators,” Eitel said. “Rulemaking just got a lot more challenging for the federal bureaucrats in the department looking to push the statutory envelope on Title IX.”

NYC Expands Debit-Card Program: Free Money for 1000s of Illegals

Editor 1
-
0
NYC Expands Debit-Card Program: Free Money for 1000s of Illegals

(Christian Wade, The Center Square) New York City officials are dramatically expanding a controversial program that gives debit cards pre-loaded with cash to immigrant families staying in taxpayer-funded hotels across the city.

The Adams administration says another round of debit cards is expected to be distributed to more than 7,300 illegal immigrants over the next six months, costing the city about $2.6 million. The move represents a major expansion of a pilot program that began earlier this year that doled out cards to about 3,000 illegals.

Anne Williams–Isom, New York City deputy mayor for health and human services, says the program allows newly arriving families the ability to “make choices for themselves and their children” by using debit cards.

“They can buy from local shops, support small businesses, and manage their own resources,” she said in a statement. “When we empower people, we help them achieve self-sufficiency and access the American Dream.”

Mayor Eric Adams has defended the program as a “cost savings measure” that “temporarily” replaces New York City’s existing system of providing non-perishable food boxes to migrant families staying in hotels and other city-funded shelters.

The program is a partnership between the Adams administration and the company Mobility Capital Finance, which says the plan will help migrants with food, baby supplies and other necessities as they await authorization to work from the federal government.

Under the program, a four-person family with children under five can receive up to $350 per week, or about $18,200 a year, according to published news reports.

Critics, including New York Council member Joseph Borelli, have argued that the debit cards are “fundamentally unfair” to the city’s working poor, who don’t receive similar benefits from the city.

Borelli and other Republicans argue that the city’s right to shelter law, which requires it to provide housing, food and other necessities—coupled with the city’s ‘sanctuary’ policy cooperation with immigration crackdowns—are drawing a record number of illegals to the city.

New York City has seen more than 183,000 so-called asylum seekers arrive over the past year amid a historic surge of immigration along the U.S.–Mexico border. Over the past year, the city has spent more than $1 billion on tens of thousands of migrants under its care and expects to spend about $10 billion on migrant costs in coming years.

City officials say the cards cost about half as much as delivering boxes of food to the families staying at hotels and other city shelters. The program has saved the city more than $598,000, officials said, and is projected to save $4 million on migrant costs by the end of this year.

Earlier this year, a group of Congressional Republicans, including Reps. Darrell Issa, R-Calif.; Barry Moore, R.-Ala.; and Lauren Boebert, R-Colo., blasted the program and questioned whether federal funds are being used for the debit cards, how city officials are determining eligibility to receive the money, and whether they are tracking how and where it is being spent.

They pointed out that the $350 made available to migrants each week as part of the debit card program exceeds the average $291 per month given to low-income, elderly and disabled U.S. citizens through the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, also known as food stamps.

The GOP lawmakers also chided Adams over the city’s “sanctuary” status, as well as the city’s transportation and housing programs that they claimed are encouraging “illegal immigrants” to flood the city.

Nashville Shooter Left over 100 GBs of Evidence, ALL to Be Kept Secret

Ken Silva
-
0
Nashville Shooter Left over 100 GBs of Evidence, ALL to Be Kept Secret

(Ken Silva, Headline USA) Nashville Judge I’Ashea Myles has decided that none of Nashville school shooter Audrey Hale’s writings should be made public, accepting the dubious argument that Hale’s victims have copyrights to the material—even though the victims haven’t registered with the federal copyright office.

“The materials created by Hale are exempted from disclosure based on the federal Copyright Act,” Myles said.

“Whether or not an original work of authorship has been registered with the federal copyright office is germane to the amount of recoverable damages in a copyright infringement action, but it has no bearing on whether or not this state law is preempted by federal copyright law,” she said.

The judge also ruled that disclosing Hale’s writings could inspire copycat killers, disregarding the testimony of an expert psychologist who said that there’s no evidence to support that copycat theory.

Myles is the same judge to trample on the First Amendment by threatening a newspaper that’s already published some of Hale’s writings. According to Myles’s Thursday ruling, the evidence held by law enforcement includes more than 100 gigabytes of data.

Police have said the writings that they collected as part of their investigation into the March 27, 2023, shooting at the Covenant School that killed three 9-year-old children and three adult staff members are public records. However, they have said they cannot be released until their investigation is concluded.

Despite law enforcement’s attempts to keep the manifesto secret, the first three pages the purported manifesto were leaked to conservative broadcaster Steven Crowder last November. The Nashville Police Department reportedly suspended seven detectives over the leak.

The portion of the manifesto that was leaked purportedly revealed Hale, who identified a transgender, had been planning the school shooting for years, and that she deliberately targeted “white privileged” “cr*****s” and “f****ts.”

“Can’t believe I’m doing this but I’m ready… I hope my victims aren’t,” Hale wrote. “My only fear is if anything goes wrong. I’ll do my best to prevent any of the sort. God let my wrath take over my anxiety. It might be 10 minutes tops. It might be 3-7. It’s gonna go quick. I hope I have a high death count. Ready to die.”

The more recent excerpts published by The Star reveal Hale’s transgender ideation.

“2007 was the birth of puberty blockers and a newfound discovery for treatment of non-conforming transgender children,” Hale reportedly wrote. “I’d kill to have those resources.”

It appears that the vast majority of Hale’s writings have yet to be released.

Ken Silva is a staff writer at Headline USA. Follow him at twitter.com/jd_cashless.

Columbia University Admin Under Fire for Anti-Semitic Texts

Editor 1
-
0
Columbia University Admin Under Fire for Anti-Semitic Texts

(, The Center Square) Columbia University is getting slammed after transcripts of anti-Semitic texts sent between Columbia administrators were released, as was detailed by the U.S. Committee on Education and the Workforce.

This update comes after a previous release from the committee about alleged offensive texts that “downplayed” antisemitism issues at the university being sent between Columbia administrators, as the Center Square previously reported.

The texts were sent in a group chat between school deans during a panel discussing antisemitism that was hosted on Columbia’s campus as a part of an alumni weekend, according to a news release from the committee.

“Education and the Workforce Committee Chairwoman Virginia Foxx (R-NC) today is again demanding accountability for Columbia University administrators after releasing text messages received as part of the Committee’s ongoing antisemitism investigation that show the disparaging and dismissive attitudes Columbia’s administrators hold towards Jewish students,” the Education and the Workforce Committee said in their release.

Several of the text messages between Columbia’s administrators reinforced multiple harmful stereotypes of Jewish people, according to the release.

Stereotypes specifically aimed at Jewish people and money were used in the text message exchanges in a mocking manner.

Some of the messages were referencing an op-ed piece on anti-Semitism at Columbia that was written by Campus Rabbi Yonah Hain and published in 2023, according to the release.

“Amazing what $$$$ can do,” one text message said in reference to Hain’s op-ed piece.
Hain’s op-ed was published as a call to action concerning antisemitism at Columbia.

Hain talked about the “binary thinking” and “us versus them” attitude that many pro-Palestine protesters exhibited on Columbia’s campus in his writing.

“The Columbia University community has lost its moral compass,” Hain wrote.
Hain highlighted the “suffering” of Jewish people in his op-ed.

“Much of the rest of the campus community—administrators, faculty and students—has lost its moral core,” Hain wrote.

“I know the pressure and legitimate struggle for people on all sides of this conflict,” he added. “But we must differentiate between political concerns and moral imperatives; it is a moral obligation that any laudation of the indiscriminate atrocities Hamas has perpetrated against Israelis or minimization of our campus’ Jewish community’s suffering not be accepted as legitimate in this discourse.”

Another text message pushed the stereotype of Jews and money even further, mentioning Lavine Family Executive Director Brian Cohen and referring to “huge fundraising potential” for him.

One scathing text sent between the deans said that it was “hard to hear the woe is me, we need to huddle at the Kraft center,” which referenced Columbia’s Kraft Center for Jewish Life.

Foxx slammed the administrators in the latest release, calling for “accountability” on campus at Columbia.

“Jewish students deserve better than to have harassment and threats against them dismissed as ‘privilege,’ and Jewish faculty members deserve better than to be mocked by their colleagues,” Foxx said in the release.

“These text messages once again confirm the need for serious accountability across Columbia’s campus,” Foxx said.

This incident at Columbia is not the first of its kind, as anti-Semitism has been on the rise at universities and other places in America, as the Center Square previously reported.

One text message from one of the Columbia deans referred to the administration at Columbia as being “jokers” for hosting the panel.

“This panel is really making the administration look like jokers,” the dean said in one of the text messages.

Another disparaging text message from this exchange detailed how the Jewish students were “privileged,” referencing them as “coming from a place of privilege.”

Some of the texts included the use of emojis that seemed to mock the university panel’s anti-Semitism discussion even further, including the usage of a vomit emoji and a nauseous face emoji.

Dem. Powerbroker Calls for Another Primary in Unprecedented Move against Biden

Headline USA Editor
-
0
Dem. Powerbroker Calls for Another Primary in Unprecedented Move against Biden

(Headline USA) He is often credited as the man who delivered the Democratic nomination to Joe Biden with a pivotal endorsement four years ago.

But on Wednesday, Rep. James Clyburn, D-S.C., sent a resounding message to the president and elected officials across the nation that it may be time to move on.

Clyburn, a Biden campaign co-chair, outlined a process to replace Biden during an interview with CNN. Should Biden step aside, Clyburn said, he expects a “mini-primary” featuring Vice President Kamala Harris, governors and others in the run-up to the Democratic National Convention in August.

“You can actually fashion the process that’s already in place to make it a mini-primary and I would support that,” said Clyburn, who also spoke to Biden on Wednesday in a conversation his office refused to discuss.

Clyburn’s decision to spell out in detail how Biden might be replaced was viewed as a clarion call by some top donors, party insiders and even members of Biden’s campaign who increasingly believe that the 81-year-old president will be forced to step aside following a debate performance that shook the party’s confidence in his ability to defeat Republican former President Donald Trump in November.

The extraordinary remarks echoed throughout the private conversations of donors, Democratic National Committee members and even Biden’s campaign staff, according to multiple participants who spoke on the condition of anonymity to share sensitive discussions. In response to Clyburn’s latest comments, at least one member of Biden’s finance committee predicted that the president would not survive the political crisis.

Indeed, the conversation among many insiders has begun to shift from whether Biden should stay in the race to the logistics of his departure.

Clyburn spokesperson Brianna Frias later clarified that he was responding to a hypothetical question and not trying to restart the nomination contest.

“He was not calling for a ‘mini primary,’” Frias said. ”Instead, he was explaining the existing process. The congressman fully supports this president at the top of the ticket and it would be irresponsible to report anything otherwise.”

A significant group of party insiders wants the incumbent president to stay in the race, believing he remains the party’s best hope to defeat Trump.

“I’m for Joe Biden. I encourage Joe Biden to continue to run for president and I believe that he will be reelected,” said Dick Harpootlian, a South Carolina state senator and Biden supporter. “Even in this weakened condition, I do believe he will beat Donald Trump.”

Clyburn’s comment came a day after former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi sent shockwaves across the party by raising questions about Biden’s fitness to serve. “It’s a legitimate question to say, is this an episode or is this a condition?” Pelosi said on MSNBC.

Biden vowed on Wednesday to stay in the race.

“I am running. I am the leader of the Democratic Party. No one is pushing me out,” Biden said in a call with staffers on his reelection campaign, according to a top aide who posted his comment on the X social media platform.

Privately, however, Biden’s allies shared increasing concern that he would undermine their chances to win the House and the Senate if he’s on the ballot this fall. And top donors fear that Biden’s fundraising, while strong in June, will slow considerably this month, especially among high-dollar donors.

Meanwhile, an increasing number of Democratic officials believe that Harris should be the favorite to replace Biden. Those involved in private discussions also acknowledge that California Gov. Gavin Newsom and Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer remain viable alternatives.

But for some insiders, Harris is viewed as the only nominee who would quickly unify the party and avoid a messy and divisive convention fight.

Clyburn, who described Biden’s debate performance as “concerning,” said in a MSNBC interview on Tuesday that he would support Harris if Biden were to step aside.

“This party should not in any way do anything to work around Ms. Harris,” Clyburn said. “We should do everything we can to bolster her whether she’s in second place or at the top of the ticket.”

Meanwhile, Trump’s campaign cheered on the Democratic dysfunction in a statement predicting victory.

“President Trump will beat any Democrat on Nov. 5 because he has a proven record and an agenda to Make America Great Again,” said senior advisers Chris LaCivita and Susie Wiles.

Adapted from reporting by the Associated Press

1...1,2051,2061,207...3,857Page 1,206 of 3,857