People hold up signs during a rally against “critical race theory” (CRT) being taught in schools at the Loudoun County Government center in Leesburg, Virginia on June 12, 2021. (ANDREW CABALLERO-REYNOLDS/AFP via Getty Images)
Glenn Youngkin Education Guidance Puts Parents Back in Control.
Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R) has directed public schools to help parents shield their children from transgender advocacy.
The new guidelines require all state-funded schools to abide by the names and pronouns listed on students’ official birth records unless parents submit a written request asking otherwise, according to a report by msn.com.
Additionally, schools are mandated to ensure that students participate in the athletic program and use facilities — such as restrooms and locker rooms — that correspond with their biological sex.
Parents are reportedly allowed to “opt-out” if they want their child to have access to a separate facility, such as a single-user restroom.
Notably, the guidelines also prohibit schools from hiding information about students from their parents. For example, schools are now forbidden from allowing teachers to conceal a student’s gender confusion from their parents.
“All children in Virginia deserve to have a parent engaged in their life and to be treated with dignity and respect,” Gov. Youngkin said in a statement.
“The [Virginia Department of Education’s] updated model policies reaffirm my administration’s continued commitment to ensure that every parent is involved in conversations regarding their child’s education, upbringing, and care,” the governor added.
Some school districts in Virginia, however, are threatening not to follow the law.
Richmond and Alexandria, for example, have reportedly vowed not to adhere to the guidance, maintaining that they will “continue the previously adopted policy and practice respecting individual rights and protecting students from discrimination due to gender expression, gender identity, sexual harassment, and transgender status.”
Last year, Gov. Youngkin and Virginia Attorney General Jason Miyares said they expect school districts to comply.
“It’s the law, and so I don’t really have a lot of patience for folks that see a law and don’t comply with it,” Youngkin affirmed in September.
“Protecting parents’ fundamental rights to make decisions for their children is in the Virginia code, and I fully expect that each one of the school divisions should comply,” the governor added.
PublicSq. founder and CEO Michael Seifert and Colombier Acquisition Corp. Chairman and CEO Omeed Malik on how they decided to merge via a SPAC deal.
Patriotic online marketplace PublicSq. is thriving as more American consumers seek out products and services offered by non-woke companies, and now the conservative alternative to Amazon will soon be owned by “we the people.”
The platform, which touts itself as being pro-life, pro-family and pro-freedom, will merge Wednesday with Colombier Acquisition Corp. in a special purpose acquisition company (SPAC) deal and will become a public company trading under ticker symbol PSQH on the New York Stock Exchange Thursday, when company officials will ring the opening bell.
PublicSq. CEO Michael Seifert founded the company in January 2021, and the idea of the company started when he started a list of businesses he and his wife felt proud to support because the companies’ values aligned with their own.
After sharing the list with friends, they decided to put it into a digital environment and allow other businesses to be added, and the site exploded in popularity with consumers and businesses alike.
Anti-woke marketplace PublicSq. will begin trading on the New York Stock Exchange this week under ticker symbol PSQH. (PublicSq.)
“Clearly, there’s this very large, unaddressed market in the United States that feels like, in the era of sort of woke or progressive corporatism, they’re not being talked to. In fact, in many cases, they’re being actively ignored or antagonized,” Seifert told FOX Business.
PublicSq. now has over 1.1 million consumer members active on its platform and more than 55,000 businesses, 90% of which are small businesses. Accounts are free for both buyers and sellers.
Seifert says businesses looking to join the marketplace simply sign up in a process that takes roughly four minutes, then build their profile and agree to respect PublicSq.’s core values, which essentially means the seller agrees not to spend time, money or resources antagonistically against those values.
“We’re not asking anybody to be political,” Seifert said. “We’re certainly asking them not to lecture us about our views and values and to live in alignment with those so that our consumers don’t feel like they’re having to fund causes they stand opposed to.”
PublicSq. founder and CEO Michael Seifert discusses his patriotic marketplace designed to connect consumers to American brands that represent their values on ‘The Big Money Show.’
Once a business signs up, it is vetted by PublicSq. to ensure the seller does not take public positions against the platform’s core values and assures the business is legitimate in a process that is typically complete within 24 hours.
Seifert said PublicSq.’s growth has been tremendous. Beyond PublicSq.com, the company’s app is available from the Apple App Store and Google Play. This fall, the company will allow buyers to purchase within the app from multiple vendors with a single shopping cart.
PublicSq. has also begun selling its own products in instances where customers are seeking a product, but the platform has not been able to find a vendor that aligns with its values. For instance, last week, the company launched Everylife, a line of diapers and baby wipes, which Seifert says is the nation’s first openly pro-life diaper company.
PublicSq. founder Michael Seifert giving a talk (PublicSq.)
“We are looking to build the alternative to Amazon, and we really believe with the help of our consumers and future investors that that’s exactly what we can do,” Seifert said. “We want to be a company that’s by the people, for the people and owned by ‘we the people,’ and that only happens if the people will rally around it and build it with us.
“So our encouragement, any chance we get, is if instead if you want this patriotic, parallel economy to exist, we need your help build that with us.”
Leonard Ortiz/MediaNews Group/Orange County Register via Getty Images
Getting back at the junk science. In-N-Out Requiring Employees to Show Medical Note to Wear Masks. Who can forget the COVID days when the loons told you that you bascially needed an exemption from Congress to not wear a mask? Or about 50,000 medical doctors approved by Tony the Fauch to not wear a mask? OK I’m stretching it.
Well In-N-Out Burger has loon employees who still think that they’re gonna die if they don’t wear a mask at work. Crazy I know. So In-N-Out wants those workers to have a doctors excuse saying why they have to mask up.
“It stipulates that no employee may wear a mask unless they provide a medical note that exempts them from the requirement. If they provide the medical note, they must wear a company-provided N-95 mask unless they can produce another note exempting them from that requirement too,” it added
Kayla Hill, a senior at Great Oaks Career Campus at Diamond Oakes, graduated in June and took a job with Johnson Construction in her hometown of Cincinnati.
(Salena Zito)
The Great Correction, between choosing a trade or higher education, is in motion.
CINCINNATI, Ohio —It is just days before Kayla Hill is graduating from one of the four sprawling facilities that make up the Great Oaks Career Campuses — and the Pendleton neighborhood native has a broad smile on her face as she puts the finishing touches on the pitch of a roof which she is working on in her carpentry class.
The day after graduation, the 17-year-old said she already had a well-paying job waiting for her at Johnson Construction Company. “I was always drawn to carpentry watching my dad fix things around the house, so I followed him around and started asking him questions all of the time,” she said, adding, “When I found out I could go to school for this and get a job if I applied myself, I was so happy to be able to do what I love and get paid for it.”
Several classrooms away, sparks are flying as both Emma Ashcraft and Brianna Anderson, wearing their welding helmets, put the final touches on the individual projects they have been working on for their final in their welding class. Both are seniors and both took up welding in their pursuit of very different careers.
Kayla Hill, a senior at Great Oaks Career Campus at Diamond Oakes, graduated in June and took a job with Johnson Construction in her hometown of Cincinnati.
(Salena Zito)
Anderson is set on working with her hands. “I am lined up with a pipe fitting job, and with that career choice I will travel the United States, and to be honest, I cannot wait to get my life started,” she said.
Ashcraft said she has known since she was in middle school what she wanted to do. Still, it was when she saw what Anderson was doing, making airplane parts, that she said she knew learning how to weld would only enhance her goals.
“I have been interested in aerospace engineering since seventh grade, when I came here and saw that Brianna was welding airplane parts and helicopter parts, I wanted to learn that skill so I could be the one who designed those things,” she said.
Anderson is heading off to the University of Cincinnati this fall for aerospace engineering. She said the experiences here will give her an edge in application: “I came in here not knowing anything about welding, and now I was able to build a whole model of a helicopter.”
Hill, Ashcraft, and Anderson were just three of the scores of students I met here at the Diamond branch of the Great Oaks Career Campuses that provides hands-on, practical learning for high school students beginning in 10th grade. More than 36 public school districts feed into the four campuses located in Hamilton and Warren counties, with students having over 30 career options that range from graphic arts to surgical technician to advanced manufacturing.
Brianna Anderson (left) and Emma Ashcraft are taking their welding skills in different directions; one is seeking a degree in aerospace engineering the other is off to be a pipefitter.
(Salena Zito)
If you want to be a plumber, auto mechanic, carpenter, hairdresser, or welder, this school will help you reach that goal. In fact, students who attend Great Oaks will earn professional credentials by the time they graduate from high school, with many of them walking into fields that start in the six figures.
Eight years ago, everyone from guidance counselors to parents was pushing students into higher education choices and neglecting to at least give them the option to look at a trade school or a community college, often because there was a stigma attached to vocational trades.
Our culture did a pretty good job of reflecting dismissiveness and misconceptions about the trades — offering few role models or success stories as examples of achieving the American dream by using one’s hands for a living.
One of the few people who have elevated the working man and woman in the past 20 years has been Mike Rowe, whose Dirty Jobs TV show began when his mother called him and suggested it’d be great if his 90-year-old grandfather would see him actually “doing something on television that actually looked like work.”
At the time, he was working as a reporter for a television show in San Francisco.
Rowe said the next day, he was in a sewer doing a report shoulder to shoulder with a sewer inspector. The concept of showcasing the everyman who makes our lives better had never been done before and, to everyone’s surprise, including Rowe’s, it became wildly successful.
Why? In part because there were a significant number of people watching at home who saw themselves or their parents in the segments. Remember, only 34% of Americans have a college degree.
For the past 50 years, college and university attendance has been held up as the only path to success by educators and parents alike, especially parents who attended college, so much so that the trade classes were rarely mentioned to students as a post-high school option.
That resistance to giving children an option in vocational education in the 1980s and ’90s came home to roost in the past decades when the inevitable, steep decline of available skilled workers and tradespeople hit home.
But there has been a cultural shift in the past few years that is turning that resistance to trade schools on its head. At least part of that has to do with the out-of-control costs of attending a university and the debt that follows you decades after graduation, but it also has to do with how political college campuses have become.
A new poll from Gallup has found that confidence in higher education has plunged in the past eight years. Enrollments have dropped at the same time that tuition has risen and universities have become stridently politicized in the classrooms.
The June survey showed a mere 36% of Americans have either “quite a lot” or a “great deal” of confidence in higher education, which is down from 57% just eight years ago.
Conversely, while nearly every sector of higher education has been hit with enrollment declines, trade school programs are booming, research from the National Student Clearinghouse found.
Construction, culinary, mechanic trade programs, and surgical technician programs all experienced increases in enrollment between spring 2021 and 2022, the study showed, with construction trade programs experiencing the largest enrollment increase at a whopping 19.3 percentage points year over year.
There were also significant increases in mechanic programs and culinary ones, to name just a few.
The ignorance of the education system for decades has been that trade jobs lack relevance in society. However, it seems as though it’s pretty relevant to a homeowner to be able to call a plumber if a toilet is clogged, or if a business is experiencing a backup septic system, or a church basement is flooded.
No trade schools means no plumbers, no plumbers means no ability to fix the complicated systems that keep our homes and businesses functioning. The same goes with an HVAC technician: Who exactly did these decision-makers think would keep your furnace operating in the winter and air conditioning humming in the summer?
Unlikely it was someone with a degree in French literature or women’s studies.
Hill said she is very happy with her choice, “I get to walk out of high school with a skill and start my career. I don’t think enough high students know that is an option and that is a shame.”
Target realizes what a mistake they made. Will now carry Mark Levin’s Book. Wednesday Target said they were afraid that Democrats would be offended so they said they weren’t going to sell Levin’s new book.
Target must have realized that Democrats don’t spend their money in stores beside Walmart and local liquor stores. Thursday they changed course.
Excellent to see Target cave to conservative customers. Maybe they’re not so stupid after all! https://t.co/CU6w7lfSvI
Bill Ackman explains why he embraced RFK Jr.’s skepticism on COVID vaccines. This article from CNBC is mostly anti RFK JR., but they do allow Ackman to get his point across about why he changed his views on the COVID vaccines.
Bill Ackman, one of the most influential investors on Wall Street, has stunned his Wall Street peers by amplifying Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s vaccine skepticism.
“I listened to RFK on several podcasts and a town hall and thought he raised important issues about vaccines and other issues that were worth learning more about,” the Pershing Square CEO told CNBC.Bill Ackman said in 2021 that delaying Covid vaccinations for older Americans “seems like genocide.”Today, the influential hedge fund chief and investor is amplifying the anti-vaccine views of Democratic presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
Ackman is not denying his change. In fact, he said Kennedy is asking “important questions” about vaccines, raising issues he is interested in learning more about.
Several of Ackman’s recent tweets about Covid vaccines have stunned and confounded many of his colleagues on Wall Street, according to several people who have known and been allied with him for years. And it’s led both his allies and foes to ask the same question: Why is he doing this?
Ackman answered that question in an interview with CNBC on Wednesday.
“I listened to RFK on several podcasts and a town hall and thought he raised important issues about vaccines and other issues that were worth learning more about,” said Ackman, the CEO of Pershing Square Capital. “I don’t feel like we’ve fully answered questions about the safety of all vaccines, particularly more recently approved vaccines, and our approach to determining their safety and efficacy.”
Wall Street veteran Omeed Malik is hosting a campaign fundraiser for Kennedy later this month in the Hamptons. Venture capitalist David Sacks and fellow tech leader Chamath Palihapitiya hosted a fundraiser for Kennedy in June, which raised approximately $500,000 for Kennedy’s campaign. Ackman would not say whether he planned to donate to Kennedy’s campaign for president.
Ackman told CNBC his newfound worries about vaccines come from being a parent and a concerned citizen. He said Kennedy, in his view, is asking “important questions” about them. “Unfortunately, vaccines are not safety tested,” Kennedy said at a town hall late last month.
″@RobertKennedyJr and others have raised important questions about the safety of some vaccines and have sought explanations for the dramatic increases in the incidence of childhood allergies, autism, and other health issues. These are good questions that have not been adequately answered,” Ackman said in a tweet last month that quoted a video of former Fox News host Tucker Carlson arguing that Kennedy is getting the better of President Joe Biden in the early days of the Democratic primary campaign.
When asked if he believes whether Kennedy should be president, Ackman said: “I don’t yet know, but I think he is asking important questions and raising interesting issues that are worthy of discussion and debate.”
Ackman, who has backed Democrats in the past, also wouldn’t say whether he will back Biden.
“It depends on the alternatives at the time of the general election,” Ackman said. “My strong preference is that he announces now that he won’t run to create a more open field for other candidates.”
The man is a far left wing Progressive, but he’s having second thoughts on COVID and there’s nothing wrong with that. So let’s see if more Progressives come out of the closet and take a second look at the COVID misinformation.
Winning at the 9th. James O’Keefe Wins HUGE Lawsuit in Oregon: Court Rules Anti-Recording Law Unconstitutional. This article was originally posted at the GP.
The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals overturned the law that prohibits recording in the state of Oregon. James O’Keefe and Project Veritas filed the lawsuit in Portland, Oregon back in 2020.
In Project Veritas vs Schmidt, the organization argued it had a right to engage in undercover journalism and record people without their consent. “WON in Ninth Circuit – Federal Appeals Court STRIKES DOWN Oregon criminal recording law” James O’Keefe said boasting about his win.
“It violates the 1st amendment right to free speech, INVALID ON ITS FACE” – the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals said in its ruling.
“Oregon Revised Statute 165.540(1)(c). This law prohibited anyone from making an audio recording unless that person “specifically informed” others they were recording. But the law also included special permissions from the government to allow for non-notified recording of the police, but not any other government employee,” O’Keefe said.
“That just leaves the government putting its thumb on the lens of newsgathering, deciding which news is easiest to get and skewing reporting. Like the Ninth Circuit has explained before, whatever concerns Oregon has over shoddy reporting or “fake news,” the remedy for speech that is false is speech that is true and not the suppression of speech.” O’Keefe added.
Circuit Judge Sandra S. Ikuta out of the 9th circuit in Pasadena, California authored the opinion. Ikuta wrote, “Oregon does not have a compelling interest in protecting individuals’ conversational privacy from other individuals’ protected speech in places open to the public, even if that protected speech consists of creating audio or visual recordings of other people.”
BREAKING NEWS: PORTLAND, Ore. (OMG) the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals has OVERTURNED the law that prohibits recording in the state of Oregon on the grounds it violates the 1st amendment. I filed the lawsuit (PVA v Schmidt) with attorney Benjamin Barr and Steve Klein at the Marc… pic.twitter.com/hsy50IJm2T
Jordan Poyer from the Buffalo Bills had to cancel his charity golf tournament because of liberal sponsors pulling out due to it being hosted at Trump Doral.
Well, at @officialpsq, we care about raising money for charity and we're also not a bunch of babies.
Yes my friends the far left had put pressure on the original sponsor cause this event was at a Trump golf course.
Buffalo Bills All-Pro safety Jordan Poyer announced Friday that his charity golf tournament, which he had been forced to cancel because having the event at Trump National in Doral, Florida, made some folks squeamish, is back on.
The event, which tees off July 10, is now sponsored by PublicSq, according to the New York Post. It will remain at the course owned by former President Donald Trump.
“The great news is that the tournament is going to happen,” Poyer said, according to Fox News.
“We had the most amount of tremendous support around the country. We had a sponsor — PublicSq — based right out here in Florida … they’re going to sponsor the entire tournament. And the tournament is actually happening July 10 at the same exact place,” he said.
“We are grateful to announce that PublicSq will be our presenting sponsor for this year’s edition. We also want to highlight the outpouring of support that we have received from professional athletes, the general public, businesses and charitable organizations across the country. In the next couple of days, we will announce our athlete and celebrity lineup.” Avalon Sports, which represents Poyer, said in a statement.
Aileen Cannon denied a request from the government to file a list of witnesses hostile to Trump under seal. Photograph: Reuters
Winning. Judge Rules Witness List in Trump Case Can’t Be Secret. Special prosecutor Smith tried to hide his witness list. Claims 84 witnesses but wanted to keep those secret. Well the judge said NO.
Judge Cannon rejected the request made by special counsel Jack Smith to keep a list of 84 potential witnesses confidential. “The Government’s Motion does not explain why filing the list with the Court is necessary; it does not offer a particularized basis to justify sealing the list from public view; it does not explain why partial sealing, redaction, or means other than sealing are unavailable or unsatisfactory; and it does not specify the duration of any proposed seal,” Judge Aileen Cannon wrote
Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., and Elise Stefanik, R-N.Y., are moving to expunge both the first and second impeachments of former President Donald Trump, respectively.
Greene’s resolution seeks to expunge Trump’s first impeachment, which came from an accusation that he had attempted to coerce Ukraine into announcing an investigation into the Biden family. It points to a recently revealed FD-1023, which includes confidential human source information accusing both Joe and Hunter Biden of being involved in an alleged bribery scheme, wherein a Ukrainian businessperson paid $5 million to Hunter Biden and another $5 million to Joe Biden in exchange for getting a prosecutor investigating his company fired.
“Resolved, That the December 18, 2019, impeachment of President Donald John Trump is expunged, as if such Articles had never passed the full House of Representatives, as the facts and circumstances upon which such Articles were based did not meet the burden of proving the commission of ‘high Crimes and Misdemeanors’, as set forth in section 4 of article II of the Constitution,” the resolution reads.
In a statement, Greene said, “The first impeachment of President Trump was a politically motivated sham. The Democrats, led by Nancy Pelosi and Adam Schiff, weaponized a perfect phone call with Ukraine to interfere with the 2020 election. Meanwhile, the FBI had credible evidence of Joe and Hunter Biden’s corrupt dealings, confirming their involvement in a foreign bribery pay-to-play scheme and receipt of over $5 million each. All of this information was revealed to Congress by the FD-1023 form from the FBI’s most credible informant. The form vindicates President Trump and exposes the crimes of the Biden family. It’s clear that President Trump’s impeachment was nothing more than a witch hunt that needs to be expunged from our history. I’m proud to work with Chairwoman Elise Stefanik on our joint resolutions to correct the record and clear President Trump’s good name.”
Stefanik’s resolution seeks to expunge the second impeachment, which was related to the Capitol riot on Jan. 6, 2021. It reads, “Resolved, That the January 13, 2021, impeachment of President Donald John Trump is expunged, as if such Article had never passed the full House of Representatives, as the facts and circumstances upon which such Article was based met the burden of proving neither that President Trump committed ‘high Crimes and Misdemeanors’, as set forth in section 4 of article II of the Constitution, nor that President Trump engaged in ‘insurrection or rebellion against the United States’, such that he is forever precluded from ‘hold[ing] any office … under the United States’ pursuant to section 3 of the 14th Amendment to the Constitution.”
Stefanik released a statement saying, “The American people know Democrats weaponized the power of impeachment against President Donald Trump to advance their own extreme political agenda. From the beginning of this sham process, I stood up against Nancy Pelosi and Adam Schiff’s blatant attempt to shred the Constitution as House Democrats ignored the Constitution and failed to follow the legislative process. President Donald Trump was rightfully acquitted, and it is past time to expunge Democrats’ sham smear against not only President Trump’s name, but against millions of patriots across the country.”
Below are links to two other stories that would be related to this one. If Trump does end up winning in 2024 and if the Democrats do take the House, they will try a third time to Impeach Trump. Hate is part of the lefts playbook. So hang on cause the next elections will be historic.
