Ariz. Bill Would Charge Drug Dealers that Cause ODs w/ Class 1 Felonies

Wire Editor
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Ariz. Bill Would Charge Drug Dealers that Cause ODs w/ Class 1 Felonies

(Cameron Arcand, The Center Square) Arizona State Rep. Quang Nguyen is sponsoring legislation that would take strict action against fentanyl trafficking and drug dealing crimes, particularly when they involve an overdose death.

House Bill 2167 would make drug trafficking homicide a Class 1 felony punishable by a minimum of 10 years and up to 25 years. If the person has previously committed drug trafficking homicide or had a violent Class 2 or 3 felony conviction, they could face a maximum of 29 years behind bars.

“The safety of the people in our state is my top priority,” Nguyen, who is the chairman of the state House Judiciary Committee said, according to a news release.

“Fentanyl is killing tens of thousands of Americans each year and destroying families. It’s a public crisis that should unite political parties to act urgently. We are in a war to save lives,” he continued.

The bill classified a death as a drug trafficking homicide if the sale of the drug was part of the reason why a victim died.

As of 2021, more than 2,000 Arizonans died from an opioid overdose, and fentanyl is the top culprit, according to an Arizona Department of Health Services report. Sixty-seven percent of “drug overdoses” and “drug poisonings” in the United States were the result of opioids such as fentanyl, according to the United States Drug Enforcement Administration data from January 2021 to January 2022.

Nguyen’s legislation is also known as the Ashley Dunn Act, in honor of a woman from Yavapai County who died from “fentanyl-tainted narcotics,” according to a news release.

Rep. Quang Nguyen, R-Prescott Valley, concentrates on his computer during a vote on the Arizona budget at the Arizona Capitol.

NYC’s Hip Hop Museum Gets $5M in Earmarks

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NYC’s Hip Hop Museum Gets $5M in Earmarks

(Adam Andrzejewski, RealClear Wire) Among the over $16 billion worth of earmarks in the latest omnibus spending bill, New York senators made sure to allocate the New York Universal Hip Hop Museum a collective $5 million.

Earmarks are special funding mechanisms that allow federal lawmakers to designate money for local projects in their states or districts. Dubbed “the currency of corruption,” earmarks are often used on pet projects, but legislators voted to bring them back in 2021.

New York Sens. Chuck Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand each earmarked funds for the Hip Hop Museum in The Bronx, with Schumer earmarking $2 million for “educational programming” and the “purchase of equipment,” and Gillibrand earmarking $3 million for an “interior fit out.”

The Universal Hip Hop Museum “celebrates and preserves the history of local and global Hip Hop to inspire, empower, and promote understanding.” The website details exhibits, educational programs, collections of artifacts and an auditorium.

Examining its public tax filings reveals the organization is largely propped up by government grants. It reported on its tax form 990 that it only had about 10,000 visitors in 2020, and of its $216,00 in total revenue, about $50,000 came from government grants. Despite its tight budget and its overall deficit in 2020, it still found $30,000 to lobby the government.

The vagueness of the earmark descriptions make it difficult to know exactly what the money will be used for, but what’s for certain is this project could have and should have been funded locally. The state of New York and the city can and should invest in their communities and institutions, but taxpayers in Alaska shouldn’t be on the hook for a museum in the Bronx.

DeSantis Proposes Permanent Ban on COVID Mandates

Contributing Author
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DeSantis Proposes Permanent Ban on COVID Mandates

(Headline USA) Florida Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis proposed legislation this week to permanently ban all COVID-19 mandates in the state.

Blasting the “biomedical security state” that imposed mask and vaccine mandates on the public, DeSantis said his plan would “prescribe freedom” and maintain “protections for free speech for medical practitioners.”

“When the world lost its mind, Florida was a refuge of sanity, serving strongly as freedom’s linchpin,” he said on Tuesday. “These measures will ensure Florida remains this way and will provide landmark protections for free speech for medical practitioners.”

DeSantis’s proposal would ban “COVID-19 masks requirements throughout the state,” “vaccine and mask requirements in all schools,” “vaccine passports in Florida,” and prohibit “employers from hiring or firing based on mRNA jabs.”

The goal of the plan, said DeSantis, is to protect “medical freedom of choice” and “medical freedom of speech.”

“Being the free state of Florida did not happen by accident,” DeSantis said. “It required us over the past few years to stand against major institutions in our society: The bureaucracy, the medical establishment, legacy media, and even the President of the United States who, together, were working to impose a biomedical security state on society.”

DeSantis cited the Biden administration’s continued extension of the COVID-19 national emergency declaration.

“This is just nuts that we’re still doing this,” he said.

Dr. Joseph Ladapo, the Florida surgeon general, said the legislation is especially important to combat cancel culture in the scientific community.

“As a health sciences researcher and physician, I have personally witnessed accomplished scientists receive threats due to their unorthodox positions,” Ladapo said in a statement. “However, many of these positions have proven to be correct, as we’ve all seen over the past few years. All medical professionals should be encouraged to engage in scientific discourse without fearing for their livelihoods or their careers.”

REPORT: Trump Planning Return to Facebook, Twitter

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REPORT: Trump Planning Return to Facebook, Twitter

(Headline USA) Former President Donald Trump is reportedly planning a return to Facebook and Twitter, despite his commitment to Truth Social.

Trump’s campaign wrote a letter this week to Facebook’s parent company, Meta, petitioning the company to reinstate his account, according to NBC News.

“We believe that the ban on President Trump’s account on Facebook has dramatically distorted and inhibited the public discourse,” Trump’s team wrote, adding that the former president would be happy to host a “meeting to discuss President Trump’s prompt reinstatement to the platform.”

Meta has not yet said whether it plans to reinstate Trump, but said in a statement that the company “will announce a decision in the coming weeks in line with the process we laid out.”

Trump has had more luck thus far on Twitter. Elon Musk reinstated his account last month following a public survey in which a majority of users expressed support for Trump’s return to the platform.

Trump initially brushed off the idea of returning to Twitter, but a source familiar with the former president’s thinking said he wants to start tweeting again. Campaign advisers have even begun drafting ideas for his first tweet, the source added.

“Trump is probably coming back to Twitter. It’s just a question of how and when,” a source familiar with Trump’s thinking told NBC News. “He’s been talking about it for weeks, but Trump speaks for Trump, so it’s anyone’s guess what he’ll do or say or when.”

It remains unclear whether Trump’s ties to Truth Social would limit his ability to tweet, since he has an exclusive content agreement with the Trump Media and Technology Group.

Predictably, Democrats are trying to keep Trump off both Twitter and Facebook. In a letter to Meta last week, Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., claimed the company should uphold its ban on Trump’s account.

“Trump has continued to post harmful election content on Truth Social that would likely violate Facebook’s policies, and we have every reason to believe he would bring similar conspiratorial rhetoric back to Facebook, if given the chance,” Schiff wrote.

Biden Admin Still in Court Fighting to Reimpose Travel Mask Mandate

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Biden Admin Still in Court Fighting to Reimpose Travel Mask Mandate

(Headline USA) The Biden administration is still in court fighting against a federal judge’s ruling that struck down the government’s transportation mask mandate.

On Tuesday, the Justice Department filed an appeal with the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals — nine months after a Florida judge struck down the federal mask mandate as an unconstitutional use of executive authority.

In the appeal, the Biden DOJ argued that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has the lawful authority to require travelers to wear masks on federally-regulated transports, like planes, trains and buses.

However, the appeals panel seemed to take issue with the DOJ’s argument that the CDC had “good cause” to bypass the proceedings mandated by the Administrative Procedures Act, which includes a set time in which the public can review and comment on an administrative ruling before it is imposed on them. The DOJ dismissed this concern, asking the appeals court to at least make it clear that the CDC has the authority to impose a mask mandate.

“You can imagine the next pandemic, there was an outbreak of measles or SARS and the CDC would want to and need to take swift action in order to control such a pandemic in the future,” the attorney for the Justice Department said. “I think the important thing here is that the potential collateral estoppel effect of the district court’s ruling could tie up future CDC actions.”

In April of last year, U.S. District Judge Kathryn Kimball Mizelle, a Trump appointee, ruled the Biden administration violated the Administrative Procedures Act by failing to properly explain its decision to impose the travel mask mandate or follow proper rulemaking procedures. 

“Because ‘our system does not permit agencies to act unlawfully even in the pursuit of desirable ends,’ the court declares unlawful and vacates the mask mandate,” Mizelle wrote in her decision.

FEC Dismisses Evidence of Google’s Overwhelming Bias against GOP

Molly Bruns
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FEC Dismisses Evidence of Google’s Overwhelming Bias against GOP

(Molly Bruns, Headline USA) The Federal Election Commission recently dismissed a complaint by Republicans who asserted that Google flagged their fundraising emails as spam more frequently than they did for Democrats.

According to the Daily Caller, the complaint originated with a March 2022 study from North Carolina State University that discovered 67.6% of GOP fundraising emails went straight to users’ spam folders.

Comparatively, only 8.2% of Democrat emails requesting money faced similar issues.

Congressional Republicans claimed that the “overwhelmingly disproportionate suppression” was significant enough to qualify as illegal corporate contribution.

“Google has credibly supported its claim that its spam filter is in place for commercial reasons and thus did not constitute a contribution,” the FEC argued when dismissing the complaint.

“Though the NCSU Study [sic] appears to demonstrate a disparate impact from Google’s spam filter, it explicitly states that its authors have ‘no reason to believe that there were deliberate attempts from these email services to create these biases to influence the voters.”

Google released a FEC-approved program in September 2022 that would allow emails from political campaigns to work around the spam filter. This was largely in response to complaints from Republicans.

However very few Republican campaigns enrolled in the program. This resulted in a contentious argument—some argued the Republicans did not enroll in the program straightaway and that lost them money, others stated that the need for a bypass acted as proof that Google is biased.

“The Commission’s bipartisan decision to dismiss this complaint reaffirms that Gmail does not filter emails for political purposes,” Google spokesman José Castañeda told the Daily Caller News Foundation. “We’ll continue to invest in our Gmail industry-leading spam filters because, as the FEC notes, they’re important to protecting people’s inboxes from receiving unwanted, unsolicited, or dangerous messages.”

The RNC calculated that the algorithms causing their fundraising emails to go directly to the spam filter cost their candidates an estimated $2 billion since 2019.

“Google cannot explain away how they’ve overwhelmingly and systematically diverted Republican emails to voters’ spam folders while letting Democrat emails through,” RNC spokesman Nathan Brand stated. “The RNC will continue to hold Big Tech accountable for putting its thumb on the scales to help Democrats win elections.”

FAA Admits to Lowering the Bar for Pilots’ Heart Rates after Vax Push

Jacob Bruns
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FAA Admits to Lowering the Bar for Pilots’ Heart Rates after Vax Push

(Jacob Bruns, Headline USA) The Federal Aviation Administration quietly admitted to lowering its standards for pilots’ heart rates in the post-COVID jab era, medical journalist Steve Kirsch reported on his Substack blog.

The changes were reportedly made in October 2022, when, in its Guide for Aviation Medical Examiners, the FAA amended the electrocardiogram parameters to reflect the needs of vaccinated pilots.

Although largely unnoticed for several months, it carries alarming implications both for the safety of air travel and in its tacit acknowledgment by a federal agency that the vaccine produces harmful side-effects.

The guide change, which was made with no announcement, altered the requirements for a pilot’s PR interval—a measure of heart function. The FAA used to demand that pilots fall within the range of 0.12 to 0.2 seconds.

But now, they allow pilots to fall within the range of 0.12 to 0.3 seconds, and potentially even higher.

PR intervals above 0.2 seconds indicate potentially-severe heart problems such as pericarditis or myocarditis, two conditions that have spiked dramatically among vaxxed populations, even among children and otherwise healthy young people.

Kirsch noted that there is some substantial evidence supporting the speculative connection between the jab and heart troubles, emphasizing in particular the fact that numerous stories to the effect have not only been ignored, but actively silenced.

Further, the FAA only made the changes over two years after the pandemic began, suggesting that the cause was more recently discovered. Lastly, he noted that cardiologists have only seen catastrophic heart damage on a large scale since the vaccine was created.

Of course, the Federal Government has ensured that Big Pharma is not only enriched by U.S. taxpayers, but that those same taxpayers cannot sue for damages caused by the mandatory Big Pharma products.

In other words, the federal government has forced citizens to comply while at the same time making them entirely defenseless in the face of the diseases that it spread.

Freedom Caucus Wins Big in Committee Assignments After Speaker Battle

Ezekiel Loseke
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Freedom Caucus Wins Big in Committee Assignments After Speaker Battle

(Ezekiel Loseke, Headline USA) The House Freedom Caucus has received some of the most desirable appointments from Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., after their battle over his seat, adding even more conservative reforms to the Congress as a result of the spat.

The committee responsible for investigations, the House Oversight Committee, is adding six members from the Freedom Caucus, Axios reported. The new members are Reps. Byron Donalds, R-Fla., Paul Gosar, R-Ariz., Scott Perry, R-Pa., Anna Paulina Luna, R-Fla., Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., and Lauren Bobert, R-Colo.

McCarthy has thus empowered the Freedom Caucus to investigate the Biden administration.

Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, will be the chair of the Judiciary Committee, and received more seats on the committee. It also retained Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., as a member. This committee matters because it is where articles of impeachment for Joe Biden would initiate.

Mark Green, R-Tenn., will be the head of the Homeland Security Committee.

Reps. Andrew Clyde, R-Ga, and Michael Cloud, R-Texas, were added to the committee on Appropriations. Rep. Andy Ogles, R-Tenn, was added to Financial Services.

Some members were concerned that McCarthy was out for blood and revenge on holdouts with appointments, but were pleasantly surprised by his leadership.

“I was watching that and I thought, ‘Maybe there will be some retribution,'” Rep. Mike Kelly, R-Pa., said. “Honestly, it was so fair, right across the board … there’s no residual from [the speaker election], nobody had a hangover.”

Other Republican House members heaped praise on McCarthy.

“We as a steering committee focused on making sure there was balance on all the committees,” Rep. Richard Hudson, R-N.C., said. “I think the speaker did a good job with it.”

These appointments may be seen as McCarthy fulfilling his promises to the Freedom Caucus. He promised to appoint caucus members to the rules committee, to seriously drain the swamp and to hold the administration accountable.

The appointments are a major victory for the Freedom Caucus resulting from its hardball negotiations with McCarthy, and need to be added to the major institutional reforms and rules package that the Caucus also won.

Project Veritas Catches CRT Peddler Admitting to Skirting the Law

Ken Silva
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Project Veritas Catches CRT Peddler Admitting to Skirting the Law

(Ken Silva, Headline USA) Undercover journalism outlet Project Veritas released its latest investigation Tuesday, releasing footage of an educator in Georgia admitting to including critical race theory in school curriculums—a practice that likely violates the state’s law banning CRT in public schools.

Project Veritas identified the educator caught on camera as Quintin Bostic, a content manager for The Teaching Lab—a contractor that designs curriculums for schools. According to Project Veritas, Bostic received his PhD in education from Georgia State University and had his teaching license revoked in 2017.

Bostic is seen on video talking about how he stealthily includes CRT curriculum by describing it as “diversity, equity, and inclusion.”

 “If you don’t say the words ‘critical race theory,’ you can technically teach it,” he said. “They have no clue [what is in my curriculum] and I’m like, ‘This is great! This is good!’”

Bostic told the undercover Project Veritas reporter that he “would get nailed” if Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp’s wife, who was a teacher, were to find out what he is doing.

Kemp signed a law last August prohibiting any instruction that asserts that the U.S. is “fundamentally racist” or that says individuals “should feel anguish, guilt or any other form of discomfort or stress” because of their race. The bill does not mention CRT by name.

Bostic divulged his motivations for his actions, saying he wants to influence children and their parents—and make a lot of money in the process. Bostic is seen nodding and smiling when the Project Veritas reporter asked him, “So you’re making money off of ignorant parents?”

Bostic also described himself as an “evil salesman” while unwittingly talking to Project Veritas.

“I would say I’m a good salesman, but I’m also an evil salesman,” he said. “Basically, [the money] goes right to my account.”

Bostic has locked or removed his social media accounts, and could not be reached for comment.

The Teaching Lab, which describes itself as a “non-profit organization whose mission is to fundamentally shift the paradigm of teacher professional learning for educational equity,” did not respond to a Headline USA email seeking comment.

Project Veritas founder James O’Keefe hosted a livestream discussion on Twitter Tuesday night following the release of the investigation. O’Keefe previewed that a second part of the investigation will be released later, and will show what Bostic “really thinks” about The Teaching Lab.

O’Keefe lauded his undercover reporter for the work put into the expose, but questioned whether it will result in action.

“It’s very rare you get one of these PhD guys on tape saying, ‘I am breaking the law.’

The question now is: What’s going to happen to this guy?” O’Keefe pondered.

“It’s a Republican administration in Georgia, but the county district attorney might have jurisdiction—that’s Fulton County and Cobb County.

“I think everyone craves accountability in this country.”

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

Madonna Accused of Child Trafficking by Ethiopian Watchdog Group

Jacob Bruns
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Madonna Accused of Child Trafficking by Ethiopian Watchdog Group

(Jacob Bruns, Headline USA) Former pop star and sexual revolution icon Madonna has been accused of child trafficking by an Ethiopian watchdog group, All Africa reported.

Madonna–who, like many ageing leftist women, has her own save-the-world humanitarian project, an orphanage called Raising Malawi–previously adopted four Malawians.

But now the Ethiopian World Federation, a watchdog group, is asking the Malawi leader, President Lazarus Chakwera, to investigate Madonna and her orphanage for the promotion of “homosexual and transgender” experimentation on the adopted children, noting that she may be engaging in “human trafficking and social experiments.”

The Federation also requested that the pop icon and her friends be limited in their access to African children.

Specifically, they demanded that Chakwera “restrict her and her associates accessibility to Africa and to African children as a precautionary measure until a thorough investigation is done into child trafficking, sex exploitation, sexual slavery, adoption reversal, threat of coercion, fraud, deception and abuse of power or vulnerability.”

The Federation cited Malawi Penal Code, Section 137A, which has in the past sent leftist media elites into an uproar. The section prohibits “indecent practices between females” with those determined to be guilty being “liable to imprisonment for five years’.

The petitioners further suggested that the orphanage may specifically be a boot camp for Madonna’s sexual experimentation.

The “psychology behind her ability to release child pornography, religious imagery, bestiality and vulgar pornography has prompted her to open an orphanage in Malawi named ‘Raising Malawi’ in 2006 to host social experiments on vulnerable African children in Malawi”.

Of course this is far from Madonna’s first scandal.

She recently made the news by openly bragging about her vulgarity, influence, and destruction of American decency.

“Now Cardi B can sing about her WAP. Kim Kardashian can grace the cover of any magazine with her naked ass and Miley Cyrus can come in like a wrecking ball,” she wrote.

She followed up her description of our perverted culture with, “You’re welcome b—-es.”

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