Author: Wisconsin Daily Star Staff

Several female members of the Kappa Kappa Gamma chapter at the University of Wyoming filed an appeal Monday after a court dismissed their lawsuit regarding a biological male who was allowed into their sorority house, according to court documents.

A judge ruled in August that the national organization of Kappa Kappa Gamma has the right to determine its own definition of women for its sororities and did not violate the rules by allowing biological male Artemis Langford, who identifies as a woman, into the chapter. In their first filing, the plaintiffs also listed Langford as one of the defendants, but the appeal only lists the housing organization, the chapter and Kappa Kappa Gamma President Mary Pat Rooney, according to court documents.

Commentary: The Implications of Joe Biden’s Pending Political Demise

I’ve been saying, at The Spectacle podcast and elsewhere, that I refuse to make any assumptions about the 2024 presidential cycle. And let me offer the further caveat that Republican voters and conservative activists, not to mention current and prospective officeholders who wear that “R” next to their political names, had better pay a whole lot more attention to the structure of next year’s political cycle than to the personalities and candidates involved.

Voters Overwhelmingly Side with the GOP on the Economy: Poll

Republicans hold a commanding lead among voters’ views toward which party handles the economy better as President Joe Biden continues to pitch his economic policy to the American people, according to a new NBC News poll.

Republicans lead Democrats 49% to 28% among registered voters surveyed on the economy, which is the largest lead in NBC polling since 1991, according to NBC News. Biden has sought to sell his economic policy, dubbed “Bidenomics,” to Americans, which consists of high-spending stimulus programs and green energy subsidies.

Gavin Newsom Signs Law Barring Removal of LGBTQ Books from Schools

Democratic California Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a bill Monday that will ban school boards from removing books that teach racial or LGBTQ topics in the classroom.

School boards around the U.S. are removing books and materials from classrooms that parents have deemed inappropriate, causing books with overtly racial or sexual material to become a flashpoint in the culture wars. A.B. 1078, which Newsom signed, will prevent school boards from banning instructional materials or library books that include information teaching about racial or LGBTQ topics, and will allow the county superintendent to take unilateral action to include these materials, according to the bill.

Commentary: The Looming Economic Cauldron

The current confluence of economic conundrums elevates risks massively for the prosperity of Americans, especially those of modest means. These unprecedented, concurring economic contradictions flow directly from the dire mistakes of the 2020 virus panic.

Dem-Aligned ‘States Project’ Drops Millions to Change Laws in Swing States

The States Project, a Democrat-aligned group, spent $60 million across five swing states last year as part of an effort to proliferate liberal policies, The New York Times reported.

The group focuses on getting Democrats elected to state legislatures and aids them once elected in order to get more liberal policies passed, according to its website. The States Project’s is a joint initiative between PAC For America’s Future, which receives funding from George Soros’ Democracy PAC, and Future Now Action, a 501c4 dark money group that does not disclose its donors, according to the organization’s website.

Victor Davis Hanson Commentary: Is the Left Happy That They Got Their Wish?

by Victor Davis Hanson America has been in a veritable cultural revolution since the 1960s. Nearly all our major institutions finally became woke — the administrative state, traditional and social media, universities, K-12, the corporate boardroom, entertainment, professional sports, and the foundations. So the Obama and the Biden administrations…

‘Losing Our Freedom of Speech’: Parent Speaks Out Against Middle School’s Explicit Reading List

Cooper Middle School in McClean, Virginia, gave students an age- inappropriate reading list for their 7th grade English class this year, a concerned parent told the Daily Caller News Foundation.

Students in the English class were assigned a wide variety of books on topics that spanned from illegal immigration to Black Lives Matter (BLM), according to a copy of the list. Although the reading list clarifies that students will not have to read every single book, one teacher at the middle school said students would have to choose books to read from the provided options unless a parent offered an alternate, school-approved book, an orientation video welcoming students to the class showed.

EPA Shelled Out Millions to Dem Megadonor-Tied Group Seeking to Hamstring American Industry

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) gave a $13 million grant to a Michael Bloomberg-tied group looking to undermine a key U.S. industry under the EPA’s regulatory purview.

The EPA grant went to the Deep South Center For Environmental Justice (DSCFEJ), a grassroots eco-activism group that is a coalition partner of Bloomberg Philanthropies’ “Beyond Petrochemicals” campaign, according to the campaign’s website. The “Beyond Petrochemicals” campaign seeks to halt the expansion of petrochemical projects that manufacture fertilizer, plastics and packaging in the U.S., according to its website.

Washington Post Disavows Its Own Poll Showing Trump Up by 10 Over Biden

The Washington Post cast doubt on its own poll with ABC that showed former President Trump up by 10 points over his likely rival President Joe Biden in the 2024 presidential contest.

Trump leads Biden 52 percent to 42 percent in a hypothetical general election matchup, according to the Post. The outlet suggested that, given other polling showing a closer race, its own poll is “probably an outlier” and appeared to cast doubt on the sample.

Minnesota Democrat Rep. Dean Phillips Considering a Presidential Bid Amid Concerns over Biden, Primary Field

Minnesota Democratic Rep. Dean Phillips said he hasn’t ruled out running against President Joe Biden in 2024, citing concerns over the president’s electability and the lack of primary challengers, according to an interview released Monday.

Education Secretary Says He Doesn’t ‘Respect’ Parents Thinking ‘They Know What’s Right for Kids’

Education Secretary Miguel Cardona took a jab at certain parents who are standing up for their children’s education by stating that he does not “respect” people who are “misbehaving in public and acting as if they know what’s right for kids.”

Zero Students Proficient in Math at 40 Percent of Baltimore High Schools

Not a single student is proficient in math at 40% of Baltimore public high schools in the spring of 2023, according to state exam results obtained by Fox45.

Nearly 2,000 students took the state math exam across the 13 schools with no proficient students. Of the students who took the exam at those schools, 74.5% of them received the lowest possible score, Fox45 reported.

Fauci and Wife’s Net Worth Surpassed $11 Million Upon Leaving Government

New records reveal that Dr. Anthony Fauci and his wife Christine had a total net worth of over $11 million at the time Fauci left his government post last year.

According to Fox News, the termination papers for the former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) show that the Faucis’ net worth was up by $2 million since before the Chinese Coronavirus pandemic, despite dipping slightly between 2021 and 2022.

Federal Government Handed over Billions in COVID Relief Money to Colleges with Massive Endowments

The federal government handed over nearly $76 billion to colleges and universities from COVID-19 federal funding packages, despite the colleges and universities having billions of dollars in their endowment funds, according to data compiled by OpenTheBooks.

The Cares Act, The Coronavirus Response and Relief Supplemental Appropriations Act (CRRSSA) and The American Rescue Plan Act contained over $5 trillion in federal COVID-19 relief funds, of which nearly $76 billion was handed over to colleges and universities, according to data compiled by OpenTheBooks, a government transparency watchdog organization. Sixteen of the universities with the largest endowments received nearly $4 billion in federal COVID-19 relief funds.

Commentary: We Know Exactly What ‘De-Development’ Means

by Roger Kimball “The climate crisis,” said Al Gore at the U.N. a couple of days ago, “is a fossil fuel crisis.” “What climate crisis?” you might be asking, and you would be right to do so. Yes, it is impossible to turn anywhere in our enlightened, environmentally conscious world without…

Transportation Department Rejects Ernst’s Request to Review Telework Policies

The Department of Transportation’s (DOT) inspector general declined a request by Republican Sen. Joni Ernst of Iowa to look into telework abuses in government agencies, according to a Thursday letter provided to the Daily Caller News Foundation.

Ernst sent a letter to 24 agencies on Aug. 28 requesting that they review their telework policies to determine how taxpayer money was being spent, which Transportation Department Inspector General Eric J. Soskin declined to do, according to the letter. Ernst introduced the Stopping Home Office Work’s Unproductive Problems (SHOW UP) Act on Sept. 13 to address issues with telecommuting as part of a package of legislation to rein in the “administrative state.”

Congressional Report Details ‘Pervasive Degradation’ of First Amendment Rights on College Campuses

A congressional report released by the House Committee on Education and the Workforce on Thursday describes the “long-standing and pervasive degradation of First Amendment rights” on college campuses.

The report, titled “Freedom of Speech and Its Protection on College Campuses,” details the committee’s findings on First Amendment violations such as “cancellations” of events to please “one-sided woke faculty and administrators.” The report provided legislation suggestions to protect freedom of speech and prevent a “plague of illiberalism,” including disclosure requirements of free speech policies and mandated neutrality to prevent colleges from commenting on public policy or social issues.

Commentary: The Year in Teacher Union Double Dealing

This has been an egregious year for the country’s teachers unions. Okay, you may be thinking, so what else is new? But 2023 has exposed them as hypocrites par excellence.

The National Education Association convention in July provides myriad examples. While one might think a gathering of teachers would be concerned with the lack of literacy in public school students, he would be dead wrong. This year’s NEA convention in Florida was strictly political, and sex- and gender-obsessed ideas were front and center.

Bob Menendez to ‘Temporarily’ Step Down as Chairman of Senate Foreign Relations Committee

Democratic Sen. Robert Menendez of New Jersey will temporarily step down as chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee after he was indicted by federal prosecutors in New York on Friday, according to a statement issued by Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer’s office.

Menendez, the three-term senior senator from New Jersey, was indicted by a grand jury in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York on federal corruption charges, being alleged to have accepted bribes in cash, gold bullion and a luxury car in exchange for shaping U.S. foreign policy towards Egypt and interfering in investigations on behalf of his affiliates. Schumer announced that Menendez’s decision to step down from his role as chairman was temporary, according to the announcement.

Commentary: Democratic-Run States Are Losing Population, Power, and Congressional Seats

For years, Americans who believe in limited government and putting the American people first have had to watch as states like California, New York, and Illinois have turned their cities into dystopian hellscapes and sent unhinged politicians to Washington DC to inflict their policies on the rest of the nation.

But something very interesting has been happening over the past decade and this trend is only accelerating – the most left-wing states are slowly losing power as their populations decrease and residents move elsewhere. California, New York, Illinois, and others are losing population as residents move to friendlier and freer states. What this translates into is a mathematical solution to leftism and centralized government control.

Commentary: The Continuing Cultural Revolution

Christopher F. Rufo’s America’s Cultural Revolution is a landmark study of America’s radicalization since the 1960s. It is a carefully constructed work full of insights, which confirmed for me the conclusions that I had reached while studying some of the same topics. Rufo shows convincingly that certain radical thinkers, most of whom were American born, affected deeply and perhaps irreversibly American institutions starting in the 1960s. This study clearly avoids an interpretive perspective that I have repeatedly mocked, exemplified by those who pretend that American culture and politics were generally sound up until quite recently, perhaps until the point when LGBT enthusiasts turned from gay marriage to gender transitioning.

California AG Sues Pregnancy Centers for Offering Abortion Reversal Pill

California Attorney General Rob Bonta filed a lawsuit against several pro-life pregnancy centers Thursday, alleging that they are “misleading patients” by advertising an abortion reversal pill, according to a press release.

Heartbeat International (HI) and its affiliate, RealOptions pregnancy centers, suggest on their website that the use of progesterone can, in some cases, reverse the effects of a chemical abortion pill if the mother has only taken the first dose. Bonta argued that the treatment has “no credible scientific backing” and poses a potential risk for pregnant women, according to the press release.

Commentary: The Importance of Making Mistakes

A couple of years ago, I received a post-semester email from a student’s father. He was upset about his child’s final grade in my class, which had landed somewhere between a high B and a low A.

The grade was clearly not very low, but the student’s father wanted me to reconsider. Apparently, a specific assignment’s less-than-perfect score had kept his son from making the honor roll.

Elon Musk’s Brain Chip Company Is Officially Recruiting Humans for Testing

Billionaire Elon Musk’s brain chip company Neuralink is officially recruiting human beings for a clinical trial, the biotech firm announced on Tuesday.

The trial will be open to individuals with quadriplegia resulting from cervical spinal cord injury or amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), Neuralink announced on its website. It seeks to assess the brain implant’s safety, the performance of its “surgical robot” and gauge the chip’s effectiveness in allowing paralyzed people to influence external devices through their thoughts.

Virginia Representative Proposes Defunding Colleges with Vax Mandates

The COVID-19 pandemic is over, but vaccine mandates imposed by colleges and universities are not. Now a Virginia congressman has introduced a bill to withhold federal funds from institutions of higher education that require vaccinations against the disease.

President Joe Biden declared the pandemic over in ending the public health emergency May 11. Despite this, nearly 100 colleges and universities currently require students to be vaccinated against COVID-19 for the 2023-2024 school year.

Commentary: The Justice System Is Now a Weapon in Progressives’ Arsenal Against Political Enemies

Attorney General Merrick Garland gave his best Captain Renault impression on Capitol Hill in denying a double standard in how the Justice Department investigated (or didn’t) Hunter Biden (and his father) versus how they pursue his political rival. Shocked, shocked, indeed.

Those experiencing the less pleasant side of judicial double standards see rather clearly the woke hall pass.

West Point Sued over Race-Based Admissions Process

On Tuesday, an anti-affirmative action group filed a lawsuit against the U.S. Military Academy at West Point over its race-based admissions process in the aftermath of the Supreme Court’s decision overturning such practices.

As reported by Axios, the lawsuit was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York by Students for Fair Admissions (SFA), the same advocacy group that ultimately ended affirmative action through two cases it had filed before the Supreme Court, Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard and Students for Fair Admissions v. University of North Carolina. In both cases, SFA successfully argued that affirmative action unfairly benefits black and Hispanic students, while disproportionately discriminating against White and Asian students.

Commentary: More Evidence That U.S. Intelligence Analysis Is Broken and Politicized

Last week, American Greatness reporter Debra Heine reported a bombshell story that a “highly credible” CIA whistleblower has told the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic and the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence that the CIA “bribed” six of its analysts with significant financial incentives to change their initial conclusion that the COVID-19 pandemic originated from a biolab leak in Wuhan, China and to instead conclude that the virus emerged naturally.

San Francisco Homeless Camps Hit Highest Number in Three Years

September 22, 2023 Wisconsin Daily Star Staff

The number of homeless camps that have sprouted up all across San Francisco is now at the highest point since 2020.

The Daily Caller reports that more people moved into homeless shelters in just the first six months of 2023 than during any other six-month period since 2021, according to information compiled by the San Francisco Standard. There are 523 homeless camps in the city as of July of this year, the highest total since 530 camps in October of 2020. Across these 523 camps, there are over 4,000 homeless people in San Francisco.

UAW Announces Massive Expansion of Strike Against Major Automakers

The United Auto Workers (UAW) announced on Friday that more workers will go on strike as the union and automakers continue to be unable to reach a deal.

The union announced that 38 new plants across the U.S. will join the partial strike at noon against the Big Three automakers as negotiations continue to fail to produce a new contract for the 146,000 workers, with strikes expanding against GM and Stellantis but not Ford, as the company has cooperated more than the others, according to the UAW announcement. The UAW first announced its partial strike on Sept. 14, striking at three plants: GM’s plant in Wentzville, Missouri; Ford’s plant in Wayne, Michigan; and Stellantis’ Jeep plant in Toledo, Ohio.

ICE’s Plans to Give Illegal Immigrants Photo IDs Inches Closer to Reality

September 22, 2023 Wisconsin Daily Star Staff

Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is moving closer towards giving illegal immigrants identification cards, according to new images obtained by the Daily Caller News Foundation.

In 2022, the agency announced the ICE Secure Docket program as a “pilot to modernize various forms of documentation provided to provisionally released noncitizens through a consistent, verifiable, secure card,” an ICE spokesperson told the DCNF at the time. The program is intended to allow migrants to use IDs as their cases progress; the IDs contain QR codes allowing migrants to access their court documents to prove to authorities that they have pending immigration cases, allowing them to travel through Transportation Security Administration (TSA) checkpoints with greater ease.

Commentary: Our Self-Induced Catastrophe at the Border

September 22, 2023 Wisconsin Daily Star Staff

Since early 2021 we have witnessed somewhere between 7 and 8 million illegal entries across the now nonexistent U.S. southern border.

The more the border vanished, the more federal immigration law was rendered inert, and the more Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas spun fantasies that the “border is secure.” He is now written off as a veritable “Baghdad Bob” propagandist.

Study: Black Lives Matter Protests Resulted in Increase in Murder Rates

The rise of Black Lives Matter (BLM) protests and riots over the last ten years has led to a spike in murder rates in the years during and after they occurred.

As the Daily Caller reports, BLM riots that occurred between 2014 and 2021 caused over 3,000 additional murders, an increase of 11.5%. From 2014 to 2019, there were approximately 200 fewer deaths when police used lethal measures to deal with riots. The data was compiled by a study in the Journal of Urban Economics on September 14th.

Trump Plans to Skip Debate and Visit UAW Members in Detroit, Michigan Dems Freak Out

Say what you will about former President Donald Trump, but he has a knack for ruffling the feathers of the elite while hob-knobbing with the regular folk and making connections.

While the Democrat Party likes to tout itself as the sole savior of the blue-collar worker, it’s the former president who is planning to speak to the rank-and-file in Detroit at an event next week. In fact, Trump plans to skip the second GOP presidential debate on September 27 to do so.

Commentary: American Public Says Biden Is Not the Leader America Needs to Fix the Country

A giant new poll delving deep into the public’s views on President Biden, Former President Trump, the U.S. economy and their own economic situation reveals a people deeply unhappy with the direction of the country under President Biden.

First, the latest CBS News/YouGov poll shows Trump beating Biden by one point 50% to 49%. While that’s well within the margin of error, other recent polls have shown Trump beating Biden by as many as six percentage points in the past three weeks. Whatever the metric, Trump is polling significantly better now than he was at any time in 2020, and that has Democrats worried.

Biden Uses Executive Authority to Roll Out Green Jobs Training Program

President Joe Biden will use executive authority to establish a green jobs training problem for young people after Congress shot down an earlier attempt to do so, the White House announced Wednesday.

The American Climate Corps (ACC) is projected to help about 20,000 people find work in climate-related fields, including facilitating pathways to working in federal civil service, according to the White House. An earlier version of Biden’s green jobs training program did not make it into what eventually became the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), as congressional Republicans strongly opposed the program largely due to concerns about its potential costs, according to the Associated Press.

Chinese Chip Company Appears to Be Skirting U.S. Sanctions: Report

A top Chinese tech company has been able to push out fresh Chinese-made semiconductors despite years of U.S. restrictions, according to Reuters.

HiSilicon, Huawei Technologies’ chip design unit, has increased delivery of semiconductors to surveillance camera manufacturers over the last year after the company was able to produce new tools to create more advanced chips in March, according to Reuters. The U.S. has put a number of sanctions on the semiconductor industry, with Huawei in particular being placed on the entity list by the Department of Commerce in 2019, prohibiting it from working with American companies.

Commentary: Joe Biden’s Email Alias Escorted Phone Numbers of Top U.S. Officials to Hunter Biden

September 20, 2023 Wisconsin Daily Star Staff

Authenticated documents from Hunter Biden’s laptop reveal that Joe Biden had several email aliases, such as:

Peter Henderson: [email protected]
Robin Ware: [email protected]
Robert L. Peters: [email protected]

Biden Admin Shuts Down Future Oil and Gas Activity on Thousands of Acres

The Biden administration announced Monday that it has moved to shut down future oil, gas and mining activity on thousands of acres of New Mexico land for the next 50 years.

The Bureau of Land Management (BLM), a sub-agency of the Department of the Interior (DOI), issued the Monday proposal to block new oil, gas and mineral extraction activity on 4,000 acres of land in Sandoval County, New Mexico, according to a DOI press release. The proposal is motivated by the agency’s desire to safeguard tribal cultures and recreational activity in the area, and the policy would last for 50 years if finalized.

Government Jobs Increasing Under Biden

September 20, 2023 Wisconsin Daily Star Staff

A significant portion of the jobs that have been added to the U.S. economy under Biden consists of government jobs and other public sector positions, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS).

As the Daily Caller reports, a total of 327,000 public sector jobs have been added to the economy from January to August of 2023, accounting for 17.4% of all jobs. During the same period of time in 2022, only about 175,000 public sector jobs were added, amounting to just 5% of all jobs. Overall job growth has also been slower in 2023, with a total of 1,884,000 jobs added this year compared to 3,590,000 jobs added during the same period in 2022.

Auto Union Threatens Even More Strikes If a Deal Isn’t Reached by End of Week

September 19, 2023September 18, 2023 Wisconsin Daily Star Staff

More auto workers are set to go on strike against top auto manufacturers if a deal is not met by Friday at noon, according to an announcement from the union Monday night.

The United Auto Workers (UAW) are currently engaging in a targeted strike at just three plants in negotiations with the Big Three automakers — Ford, General Motors and Stellantis — avoiding a total strike of all 146,000 unionized workers after the parties failed to reach a deal for new contracts on Sept. 14. Shawn Fain, president of the UAW, announced that more members at different plants would join the strike if the union and automakers did not make serious progress on new contracts by Friday at noon, according to a video posted by the union.

Screaming Eco-Activists Blockade Doors to New York City Federal Reserve Building

A crowd of climate activists blocked the doors of the Federal Reserve building in New York City on Monday morning, footage posted to Twitter shows.

Scores of protesters locked arms in front of the building to deny employees and officials entry, and the activists chanted protest slogans while blocking the exits, footage posted to Twitter shows. Numerous groups, including Climate Defiance, were reportedly involved in the protest, which came ahead of the United Nations (UN) General Assembly meeting in NYC to discuss climate policy set to occur this week.

Ramaswamy on Vice Presidential Possibilities: ‘I Have No Plan B’

Ohio businessman and GOP presidential hopeful Vivek Ramaswamy may still be a relative “long shot” in a Donald Trump-dominated contest, but he insists he’s not running for No. 2.

In short, there is “no Plan B,” Ramaswamy says.

Commentary: Alzheimer’s Disease Is Partly Genetic − Studying the Genes That Delay Decline in Some May Lead to Treatments for All

Diseases that run in families usually have genetic causes. Some are genetic mutations that directly cause the disease if inherited. Others are risk genes that affect the body in a way that increases the chance someone will develop the disease. In Alzheimer’s disease, genetic mutations in any of three specific genes can cause the disease, and other risk genes either increase or decrease the risk of developing Alzheimer’s.

Soros-Funded Organization ‘Gen Z for Change’ Is Fueling Joe Biden’s ‘TikTok Army’

An organization largely funded by left-wing billionaire George Soros’ philanthropic network is bankrolling a “Gen Z” group that works to advance Democratic priorities and President Joe Biden’s agenda on social media, the New York Post reported.

Accelerate Action, Inc. received over $5.5 million in 2021 and 2022 from the Open Society Foundations, a group founded by Soros and currently run by his son Alexander Soros, according to the Foundation’s website. That group gave, among other grants, $300,000 to “Gen Z for Change” a non-profit activist group that produces left-wing content uploaded onto social media websites such as TikTok and Instagram for voters to consume, according to its tax forms.

Goldman Sachs Quietly Scrubs Race-Based Eligibility Criteria From Diversity Program After Legal Experts Raise Concerns