Rep. Boebert Unveils Bill to Defund Planned Parenthood

Mark Pellin
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Rep. Boebert Unveils Bill to Defund Planned Parenthood

(Mark Pellin, Headline USA) U.S. Rep. Lauren Boebert, R-Colo., marked the first March for Life in D.C. since the overturn of Roe v. Wade by introducing legislation that would defund Planned Parenthood.

“The nation’s largest abortion provider has no business receiving taxpayer dollars,” Boebert said in a statement. “Planned Parenthood claims these funds go to healthcare for women, but last year, Planned Parenthood performed a record number of abortions while also reducing the number of well-woman exams and breast cancer screenings it performed.”

Boebert’s “Defund Planned Parenthood Act” would slap a one-year moratorium on federal funds flowing to the agency, while redirecting the resource’s to community health centers.

The bill, which already carries the weight of 26 co-sponsors, orders the Health and Human Services Department and the Department of Agriculture to seek repayment of any federal assistance received by Planned Parenthood or any of its affiliates who are in violation of their certification.

While the bill likely faces a grim fate should it reach the Democrat-controlled Senate, it drew high praise from pro-life groups.

“There’s no single entity that stands to make a profit off the violence of abortion more than Planned Parenthood,” said Kristan Hawkins, president of Students for Life of America, which supported Boebert’s bill.

“Deceitfully, Planned Parenthood guises their business model as one that helps women while their latest annual report shows they made $633 million from taxpayers, while ending 383,460 little lives in that same time frame.”

The numbers also showed an increase of almost 30,000 abortions compared to last year’s 354,871.

“That means Planned Parenthood killed 1,050 babies in abortions every single day — even though the abortion giant claims its main focus is merely women’s health care,” noted Life News. “In other words, Planned Parenthood kills one baby in an abortion every 82 seconds. Meanwhile, the ‘nonprofit’ abortion business made more money than every before — bringing in $1,714.4 billion income, aided in part by $633.4 million in taxpayer dollars.”

Planned Parenthood’s double-digit drop in the percentage of women offered screening services proves “they’re in the business of abortion,” Hawkins said.

“Students for Life Action applauds Rep. Boebert and her colleagues for cutting funds from this abortion giant while lifting up the local pregnancy centers that stand to gain nothing from helping women facing crisis pregnancy,” Hawkins said.

Biden Breaks Another Illegals Record, as Chaos Spreads at Southern Border

Mark Pellin
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Biden Breaks Another Illegals Record, as Chaos Spreads at Southern Border

(Mark Pellin, Headline USA) The Biden administration produced another record high for illegal immigration encounters last month, leaving at least one embattled Texas sheriff reduced to begging for additional support as hordes of illegals continued to overrun his county.

December marked a milestone for porous borders, when U.S. Customs and Border Protection logged 251,487 encounters with illegal aliens, the highest number ever recorded in U.S. history, reported Fox News correspondent Bill Melugin.

The December record marked the tenth consecutive month that illegal immigrant encounters topped 200,000, and that’s not counting known got-aways who eluded authorities.

There were more than 70,000 got-away cases at the border in December, adding to the “approximately 1.2 million known gotaways at the southern border since President Biden took office,” Melugin reported. “The last several months have been around 70,000 per month, per CBP sources. And those are only the *known* gotaways.”

In response to the steady surge of illegals, at least 42 counties in Texas have officially declared an invasion or expressed support for Texas declaring an invasion at the southern border, and more are in the process of doing the same, reported The Center Square.

The influx of illegal aliens forced the sheriff of Kinney County, Texas, to request help from other law enforcement across the state and country, writing that, “The safety and security of our county has been constantly under threat since early 2021 by those who have no desire to seek asylum through lawful means.”

“Our homes are being broken into in the middle of the night,” Sheriff Brad Coe wrote of the illegals that have flowed into his county. “The local school district has been forced to erect military barricades around campus to protect students from smugglers evading law enforcement. Walking outside on our own property after dark is no longer safe.

“The residents of Kinney County no longer enjoy the comfort and safety of their own home,” he wrote. “Words cannot adequately describe the conditions on the ground and the daily threats we have been forced to contend with.”

Those threats extend beyond Kinney County and the southern border, according to the latest CBP report.

House Republicans have responded to the border crisis by introducing legislation that would immediately reverse some the Biden regime’s more egregious immigration policies.

“We will never solve this border crisis if Congress is not willing to step in and fix the policies causing it,” Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas, and Mayra Flores wrote in an op-ed for Fox News. “The Border Safety and Security Act is the single best policy we would put forward to do that today.”

Buttigieg, Other Biden Officials Skipped Critical Supply Chain Meetings

Dmytro "Henry" Aleksandrov
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Buttigieg, Other Biden Officials Skipped Critical Supply Chain Meetings

(Dmytro “Henry” Aleksandrov, Headline USA) Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg and other officials from the Biden administration decided they had better things to do than attending meetings over the supply chain crisis that rocked consumers, businesses and the economy.

A public records request from the Functional Government Institute revealed that, among other people, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack never attended meetings of the task force –created two years ago by the White House — that he co-chaired to solve the supply chain problem, according to the Daily Wire.

Five months after the creation of the task force, the Agriculture Department only produced 19 pages of records related to the entity and a federal lawsuit from the Functional Government Institute. Out of those 19 pages, 14 of them were copies of public statements about the initiative. None of the records showed that Vilsack or his deputies bothered to attend any meetings.

“As the administration rightly recognized in creating the Task Force, supply chain issues threaten the economic and national security of the country,” Functional Government Institute spokesman Peter McGinnis stated in a press release.

“Secretary Vilsack’s failure to convene a single meeting with his fellow leaders, while dedicating federal resources to investigate and blame the private sector, shows that the Task Force was little more than a cynical attempt to signal engagement on supply chain disruptions while, in fact, doing little or nothing.”

Buttigieg and Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo were also co-chairs of the task force, a June 2021 statement from the White House said, adding that the officials would concentrate on bottlenecked products like construction materials, semiconductors and food supplies. In another press release, Vilsack said that he was eager to “mobilize a whole-of-government effort to address the short-term supply challenges our country faces as it recovers.”

Buttigieg went absent from duty for two months, when he took the so-called “paternity leave,” during which he never participated in any meetings. Not so long ago, instead of solving the Southwest scandal and preventing a possible nationwide rail strike, Buttigieg decided that it would be a good idea to spend his time in Portugal.

Illinois’ Gun Ban Sidetracked by Court

Wire Editor
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Illinois’ Gun Ban Sidetracked by Court

(Greg Bishop, The Center Square) Illinois’ new gun ban can’t be enforced for the more than 860 individuals who sued in state court in Effingham County after a judge issued a temporary restraining order late Friday.

Attorney Thomas DeVore filed the lawsuit seeking to block the gun ban Tuesday, a week after Democrat Gov. J.B. Pritzker enacted the law. The law prohibits the sale of more than 170 semi-automatic guns and magazines and requires a gun registry.

Exempted from the law were active and retired police officers and others in the security and law enforcement industry. DeVore argued during an emergency hearing Wednesday that the law violates equal protections of rights. Judge Joshua Morrison agreed Friday.

“[T]his court cannot find it logical that a warden or a person (included in the exempted persons category) is necessarily better trained or more experienced in the handling of weapons than a retired military personnel (not included in the exempted person category),” Morrison wrote in a ruling Friday.

Another argument was that the law wasn’t approved properly.

“This Court finds that the Defendants unequivocally and egregiously violated the Three Readings Rule of the Illinois Constitution in order to circumvent the Constitutional requirements and avoid public discourse,” Morrison wrote.

The judge said the 866 plaintiffs were likely to succeed on the merits of the case.

“We will see if the state wants to appeal. If not, we’ll work on getting this pursued to a final ruling so we can get to the merits of these issues, sooner rather than later,” DeVore told The Center Square.

The governor and legislative leaders who supported the measure said they will appeal.

“This decision is not surprising,” Pritzker said in a statement. “Although disappointing, it is the initial result we’ve seen in many cases brought by plaintiffs whose goal is to advance ideology over public safety. We are well aware that this is only the first step in defending this important legislation.”

Friday’s temporary restraining order only impacts DeVore’s clients, but he said the case continues.

“It would be expanded across the entire state once we get to the finality of it, once there’s a final ruling issued and the judge declares there’s unconstitutionality here,” DeVore said.

A preliminary injunction hearing is set for Feb. 1. Pritzker and legislative leaders said they’re disappointed in the ruling, and to expect an appeal.

Existing Home Sales Slid 17.8% Last Year

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Existing Home Sales Slid 17.8% Last Year

(Brett Rowland, The Center Square) Sales of existing homes fell 17.8% in 2022, marking the weakest sales performance since 2014 as interest rates climbed.

Interest rates rose quickly last year, a factor that weighed on the residential real estate market. The 30-year fixed-rate mortgage averaged 6.15% as of Jan. 19, down from 6.33% last week, but up from 3.56% a year ago, according to Freddie Mac.

Sales of previously-owned homes declined 17.8% last year from 2021 to 5.03 million, the National Association of Realtors said Friday. Previously-owned homes account for most home sales.

Existing-home sales dropped for the 11th consecutive month to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 4.02 million. Sales fell 1.5% from November and 34.0% from one year ago.

“December was another difficult month for buyers, who continue to face limited inventory and high mortgage rates,” NAR Chief Economist Lawrence Yun said. “However, expect sales to pick up again soon since mortgage rates have markedly declined after peaking late last year.”

The median existing-home sales price climbed 2.3% from the previous year to $366,900. It marked 130 consecutive months of year-over-year increases, the longest-running streak on record.

“Home prices nationwide are still positive, though mildly,” Yun said. “Markets in roughly half of the country are likely to offer potential buyers discounted prices compared to last year.”

The annual share of first-time home buyers was 26%, the lowest since the association began tracking the data.

GOP House Would Undo FDA Abortion Pill Rule

Dmytro "Henry" Aleksandrov
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GOP House Would Undo FDA Abortion Pill Rule

(Dmytro “Henry” Aleksandrov, Headline USA) A group of House Republicans introduced a bill this week to fight for unborn babies by placing restrictions on chemical abortion pills that would limit their use to in-person distribution only.

If the bill is enacted, it would nullify recent rule changes from President Joe Biden’s Food and Drug Administration that allows women to order abortion drugs — mifepristone and misoprostol — via telemedicine and delivered by mail and permits pharmacies to fill prescriptions for abortion pills, according to the Daily Signal.

“The FDA’s policy change for mifepristone is the latest example of President Biden’s crusade toward abortion on demand at any cost, even at the expense of women’s health,” said Rep. Diana Harshbarger, R-Tenn., adding that “… every woman in America deserves to know the heightened risks involved with chemical abortions before they make a life-altering decision.”

The pro-life bill is also designed in a way to prevent the FDA from creating a similar rule later in the future.

“My bill restores common sense and proper safety prescriber requirements for the dispensing of these dangerous abortion drugs.”

The first pill, mifepristone, that a woman takes kills an unborn baby by cutting off progesterone, a hormone the child needs to survive. The pill that a woman takes after that is misoprostol, which causes contractions to expel the baby from the woman’s body. The baby-killing drugs are approved to be taken up to 10 weeks into pregnancy.

Charlotte Lozier Institute, the pro-life research organization, reported that abortion pills have a four-times higher rate of complication than surgical abortion. The Institute stated that “as many as one out of five women will suffer a complication” after taking chemical abortion pills.

“By removing the requirement that women seeking access to the abortion pill must receive the prescription from a medical provider in person, the Biden administration has placed the health and well-being of women in jeopardy,” Rep. Doug Lamborn, R-Colo., one of the co-sponsors of the bill, said.

He also said that FDA’s rule change not only “put women with possible health conditions and concerns at risk for further health complications, but it completely negates the opportunity for women to learn about the options they have, other than terminating their pregnancy.”

Michigan School Board Member Claimed White People Are More Dangerous Than Animals

Contributing Author
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Michigan School Board Member Claimed White People Are More Dangerous Than Animals

(Headline USA) A school board member in Jackson County, Michigan, claimed white people are more dangerous than animals and called white women “stupid” in resurfaced tweets shared by Libs of TikTok.

Just last month, Kesha Hamilton claimed “whiteness is so evil.”

“Whiteness is so evil.. it manipulates then says, I won’t apologize for my dishonesty and trauma inducing practices and thinks you should applaud it for being honest about its ability to manipulate and be dishonest. #Deceitful #Perfidous,” she wrote.

In another tweet, she claimed hikers should fear white people more than animals.

“The last thing you have to worry about is an animal — though that could be a very real threat.. more dangerous are any whites you may see on the trail.. be safe!” Hamilton tweeted in December.

In 2020, Hamilton replied to a tweet, saying, “These white women are THE stupidest!”

Parents addressed Hamilton’s offensive tweets during a school board meeting on Tuesday, slamming her as a “racist.”

“Someone in her influential position must be held to a high standard. She must be a representative for all students in the JPS system,” Gina Hastings, a parent, said. “Her racist comments should not be condoned. How can all kids feel safe when physical characteristics over which they have no control are being called evil and dangerous.”

Another speaker, Jackie Leslie, said that Hamilton was “not addressing the disparities, you are adding to them by your hurtful remarks. Your words are not unifying our community. Your words are dividing our community.”

Hamilton insisted that she was not referring to white people, but to “whiteness” as a social construct.

“Whiteness defined is ‘white racialized identity (which) refers to the way that white people, their customs, culture and beliefs operate as the standard by which all other groups are compared,” she claimed.

More New Yorkers Moved to Florida in 2022 than Any Other Year

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More New Yorkers Moved to Florida in 2022 than Any Other Year

(Headline USA) More New Yorkers fled to Florida in 2022 than in any other year in history, according to a new report.

At least 64,577 New Yorkers exchanged their driver’s licenses for Florida ones last year, the New York Post reported.

“They come in every day,” a staffer at a Jacksonville DMV office said. “I hear all the complaints. I feel like a therapist sometimes.”

Most New Yorkers complain about high taxes, crime and the overall eroding quality of life in the Empire State, the staffer added.

“It’s slowed down a little bit,” she said of the exodus to Florida. “But not by a whole lot, I can tell you that.”

New Yorkers began fleeing the state during the pandemic, with 61,728 residents making the move to Florida in 2021. There’s been a 46% surge in moves from New York to Florida since 2017, according to data from the Department of Motor Vehicles.

Other leftist states, including New Jersey, California, Illinois and Pennsylvania, also lost tens of thousands of residents to Florida. New Jersey recorded 32,184 license swaps in 2022. Since 2020, California has lost lost 262,000 people to other states.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has mocked the Democrat governors of these states for passing policies that drive away residents.

“They tax and regulate so they repel people to leave their state,” he said last year. “The base shrinks so they got to do it again to try to square the circle. And you just can’t have it. So states like Illinois, New York — they are in a tailspin and they’re not probably going to be willing to change their policies.”

DeSantis also cited rising crime rates in liberal areas as a reason so many people are making the move.

Rising crime rates in other parts of the nation have also spurred interest, he argued.

“A lot of families were like, look, I need to live in a state that’s a law-and-order state,” he said. “So the number of people I run into from, like, Washington state or Minnesota who say one of the breaking points for them was the fact that crime was going through the roof.”

Judge Orders Trump to Pay $1M for ‘Frivolous’ Hillary Clinton Lawsuit

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Judge Orders Trump to Pay $1M for ‘Frivolous’ Hillary Clinton Lawsuit

(Headline USA) Former President Donald Trump and his attorney, Alina Habba, were ordered by a judge this week to pay Hillary Clinton $171,631 in legal fees for suing her over the Russia collusion hoax.

Trump filed the lawsuit against Clinton last year, accusing her and the Democratic National Committee of a wide-ranging, “unthinkable plot” to smear his 2016 campaign.

“In the run up to the 2016 Presidential Election, Hillary Clinton and her cohorts orchestrated an unthinkable plot — one that shocks the conscience and is an affront to this nation’s democracy,” he says in the 108-page complaint. 

“Acting in concert, the Defendants maliciously conspired to weave a false narrative that their Republican opponent, Donald J. Trump, was colluding with a hostile foreign sovereignty.”

Clinton, the DNC, and other cronies “worked together with a single, self-serving purpose: to vilify Donald J. Trump,” the lawsuit continued.

“Indeed, their far-reaching conspiracy was designed to cripple Trump’s bid for presidency by fabricating a scandal that would be used to trigger an unfounded federal investigation and ignite a media frenzy,” it said.

In a ruling this Thursday, Judge Donald Middlebrooks dismissed Trump’s lawsuit as “frivolous.”

“This case should never have been brought. Its inadequacy as a legal claim was evident from the start,” Middlebrooks wrote. “No reasonable lawyer would have filed it. Intended for a political purpose, none of the counts of the amended complaint stated a cognizable legal claim.”

Middlebrooks accused Trump of “needlessly” harming Clinton and the other parties in the suit “in order to dishonestly advance a political narrative.”

The judge previously threw out the case “in its entirety” in September, arguing it lacked merit and was simply a “two-hundred-page political manifesto.”

Magazine Publishes ‘Facebook Files’ Exposing CDC’s Role in Censorship

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Magazine Publishes ‘Facebook Files’ Exposing CDC’s Role in Censorship

(Headline USA) This week, Reason magazine published a number of internal documents and confidential emails that prove the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention worked with Facebook to censor COVID-19-critical speech.

The messages between CDC and Meta officials show that the Biden administration regularly kept tabs on which posts Facebook and Instagram censored. In May 2021, for example, Meta officials sent a number of claims about the COVID-19 vaccine to CDC official Carol Crawford, asking the agency to determine which claims should be left up and which ones should be removed.

Some of the claims cited by Meta were: “It is not safe for women on their period to take the COVID-19 vaccine,” “Face masks contain harmful nano worms or harmful particles,” and “COVID-19 has 99.96% survival rate.”

Other claims vetted by the CDC included whether “COVID-19 is man-made.” CDC officials responded to Meta and said that the COVID-19 lab leak theory is “theoretically possible, but extremely unlikely.”

As Reason noted, Meta prohibited users from promoting the lab-leak theory for months, eventually revising this policy at around the same time as this email exchange.

When COVID-19 vaccines became available to children, Meta officials informed the CDC that they would remove any claim that questioned the safety of COVID-19 vaccines for children. 

“We also launched a new feature on Instagram, where accounts that repeatedly post content that violates our policies on COVID-19 or vaccine misinformation may now lose the ability to be tagged or mentioned or may see pop-ups asking if they’d like to delete certain posts that may violate our policies,” a Meta official said in an email.

According to Reason, Meta and the CDC also had regular conference calls that involved Dr. Anthony Fauci and even members of the White House. At one point, for example, Rob Flaherty, the White House’s director of digital media, emailed a Facebook executive and accused the platform of spreading “ideas that contribute to vaccine hesitancy.”

“We are gravely concerned that your service is one of the top drivers of vaccine hesitancy — period,” Flaherty wrote. “We want to know that you’re trying, we want to know how we can help, and we want to know that you’re not playing a shell game. This would all be a lot easier if you would just be straight with us.”

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