States, Counties Clash over ‘Zuckerbucks’-Like New Sources of Private Election Funding

As “Zuckerbucks” — the injection of private money into public election administration — make a comeback, states and municipalities are clashing over whether the funds should be accepted or banned.

While many states and counties across the country have either restricted or banned the use of private money to fund public elections offices, a nonprofit with progressive Democrat ties that served as the key link in the 2020 Zuckerbucks funding chain is still finding loopholes in some counties as states seek to tighten up their laws.

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Biden Admin Opens Investigations into Multiple Universities for Allegedly Racist, Discriminatory Programs

The Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR) opened federal investigations into four universities this week in response to complaints filed by medical watchdog Do No Harm (DNH), according to the organization.

The OCR will investigate Wake Forest University (WFU), the University of Virginia (UVA), the University of Rochester (UR) and Thomas Jefferson University (TJU) for alleged civil rights violations, Do No Harm reported. Senior Fellow Mark Perry filed a joint complaint against WFU and UVA, alleging the institutions used school resources to partner with an organization whose activities violate Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, while Program Manager Laura Morgan violated complaints against UR and TJU for allegedly participating in programs that violate Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

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Trump Decries Weaponized Probes against Political Figures: ‘Worse than Ballot Stuffing’

Former President Donald Trump is decrying the relentless investigations launched against him and his supporters, saying they are a form of political cheating worse than ballot stuffing.

Trump assailed the chronic investigations he has faced for seven years during his first rally of the 2024 campaign season in Waco, Texas on Saturday night, and then in a subsequent post on his Truth Social platform.

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REVIEW: New Book ‘Rise to Greatness’ Explores How a Kid from Queens Became One of History’s Most Influential Supreme Court Justices

Antonin Scalia was a budding textualist long before he transformed the Supreme Court, and the nation, with his unique legal approach, a new biography of his early life reveals.

In the 1950s, the future Supreme Court Justice spent his mornings on the New York subway, commuting with his rifle to Xavier High School, a hybrid Jesuit-run Catholic school and military academy in Manhattan. His teacher’s response one day to a student’s sarcastic comment about “Hamlet” became a moment Scalia would never forget — and would refer to for the rest of his life as the Shakespeare Principle: “Mistah, when you read Shakespeah, Shakespeah’s not on trial; you ah,” Father Thomas Matthews said.

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Detransitioned Teen to Sue Doctors Over Puberty Blockers, Double Mastectomy

A detransitioned 18-year-old girl has filed a letter of intent to sue a healthcare company and the doctors who gave her puberty-blockers, at age 12, and then removed her breasts a year later.

Layla Jane claims Kaiser Foundation Hospitals, the Permanente Medical Group, and the doctors who treated her rushed her into transgender medical treatments without proper informed consent.

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‘Six Smoking Guns’: Doctor-Turned-US-Senator Roger Marshall’s Reasons for His Wuhan Lab Leak Theory

Long before key components of the intelligence community acknowledged they believed COVID-19 came from a lab leak, Kansas Republican Sen. Roger Marshall had drawn a bull’s-eye around the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

Marshall, a doctor turned politician, argued early and often that the virus’ emergence and genetic characteristics did not seem like those of a naturally evolving animal-to-human virus. But senators like him and Kentucky Republican Rand Paul were marginalized and even demeaned early on by detractors ranging from Dr. Anthony Fauci to TV comedian Stephen Colbert.

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‘Sustainable’ Electric Cars Are Getting Junked Over Minor Damage

Insurers are being forced to write off many electric vehicles with only minor damage to battery packs, sending the batteries to scrap yards and hindering the climate benefits of going electric, Reuters reported.

Battery packs typically represent roughly half the cost of an electric vehicle, sometimes costing tens of thousands of dollars, often making it more economical for insurers to consider a car as totalled than replace a battery pack, according to Reuters. While many carmakers, including Ford and GM, told Reuters that their battery packs were repairable, many are unwilling to share key data with third-party insurers to help assess damage.

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Inflation Continues to Outpace Wages, Data Shows

Inflation has outpaced wages for nearly two years, recently released federal data shows.

A closer look at federal wage and pricing data shows workers are making less overall as the price for all kinds of goods and services rise faster than average hourly wages.

The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics tracks “real” average hourly earnings, which are wages of Americans with rising inflation taken into account.

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