Mike Pence Expected to Launch 2024 Presidential Campaign Next Week

Former Vice President Mike Pence is reportedly planning on launching his 2024 presidential campaign next week, setting him up to face off against his old boss, former President Donald Trump, for the Republican nomination.  Pence is likely to launch his campaign on June 7, his birthday, at a rally in Des Moines, Iowa, according to multiple news reports. Later that day, he is scheduled to speak at a CNN town hall at Grand View University.

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Maricopa County Disputes Video Footage Revealing That Voting Tabulators Were Not Properly Tested

A video that has gone viral allegedly showing Maricopa County Elections failing to properly test voting tabulators prior to 2022’s election has prompted a defensive response from the county. The state Election Procedures Manual (EPM) requires that statutorily mandated Logic & Accuracy tests be completed after any modifications are made, such as adding new reprogrammed memory cards, which the video claims was not done. Violating the EPM is a class 2 misdemeanor.

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Catholic Major League Pitcher Trevor Williams Rebukes Dodgers for Honoring Anti-Catholic Hate Group

Washington Nationals pitcher Trevor Williams said Tuesday in a statement posted to Twitter the move by the Los Angeles Dodgers to honor the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, an anti-Catholic hate group, “makes a blatant and deeply offensive mockery of my religion.”

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Hobbs’ Claim That Ducey Administration Misappropriated Funds to Kindergarteners Criticized by Arizona Republicans and Education Advocates

Several leaders and education advocates are denouncing Governor Katie Hobbs’ reversal of funding Education Savings Accounts (ESAs) for kindergarten. Hobbs reversed the grant of $50 million in funding from the American Rescue Plan Act last week, which previous Governor Doug Ducey awarded for private school students to use.

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Arizona’s Pre-Roe Abortion Law Receives National Support from 17 States

A coalition of 17 states, led by Arkansas, is among the entities which recently asked the Arizona Supreme Court to reverse a ruling barring Arizona’s territorial-era law restricting abortions from being enforced.

The current abortion struggle in the state surrounds Arizona Revised Statute (ARS) § 13-3603, the pre-roe law which states that no person is allowed to provide a pregnant woman with an abortion unless it is necessary to save the mother’s life and ARS § 36-2322, which was enacted in 2022 and prohibits the procedure after 15 weeks of pregnancy. The Arizona Court of Appeals previously ruled that the 15-week ban takes priority over the previous law to avoid any confusion for medical professionals. Therefore, abortion is currently legal in Arizona for a brief window of pregnancy.

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Jack Miller Center Unveils ‘ContextUS,’ a New, Online Civics Library

ContextUS is the Jack Miller Center’s newly published, free online library that provides citizens with the content to gain that necessary civic knowledge. This state-of-the-art resource gives teachers, students, and scholars access to more than 700 core texts of the American political tradition, paired with the most up-to-date technology in library science, to transmit a civic education in self-government to the next generation of Americans.

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Massachusetts Public Libraries to Host Virtual Drag Queen Tutorial for Teens

More than 30 Massachusetts public libraries are joining together to host a virtual drag queen event, targeted for teens aged 13-18, in which New England-based drag queen “Giganta Smalls” will teach the young people about the life of a drag performer and help them “pick up some advice on costuming and make-up.”

According to a Westhampton Public Library Facebook post for the June 10th event called “Dishing Out Drag with Giganta Smalls,” over 30 Massachusetts public libraries are “co-hosting this PRIDE event,” that has been “made possible by a discretionary fund of the Trustees of Rowley Public Library.”

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Texas, Georgia, Arizona: Three Cases Studies of State Oversight of Troubled Local Elections

Republican-run Texas and Georgia have given state officials oversight of some local elections following issues in Democratic counties, while Arizona didn’t do so there was a Republican administration. 

Last week, the Texas House passed two pieces of election integrity legislation that were previously passed by the state Senate.

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States Legislatures Adapt to Electric Vehicles

As President Joe Biden’s administration wants 50% of all new vehicle sales to be electric by 2030, some states are pushing bills to subsidize the industry. 

In an analysis of state legislatures by The Center Square staff, actions so far this year in multiple states offer recognition to the emergence of the industry – whether trying to make up tax revenue shortfalls or simply boosting the move away from gas and diesel automobiles.

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Commentary: Identity Studies in Academia Is the Birthplace of Woke

In 1983, having spent four years earning a PhD in English, I instantly turned down the reasonably secure entry-level faculty position my alma mater offered me and chose instead to sign up for that most financially insecure of all professions: freelance literary journalist. Why? Partly because it had taken me that long to face the fact that I just wasn’t the academic type. And partly because I saw that the kind of jargon-heavy approaches that were taking over America’s English departments — from politics-driven “feminist criticism” to pretentious postmodern “deconstruction,” straight out of France by way of Yale University — had nothing whatsoever to do with my own reasons for wanting to spend my life reading and writing about books.

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Masks Offer ‘Small’ Benefit Against COVID, Increased CO2 May Be Tied to Stillbirths: Research

The termination of the COVID-19 national emergency has not ended mask mandates in various jurisdictions and settings such as healthcare, even as more peer-reviewed research suggests that face coverings can cause more harm than good.

The Annals of Internal Medicine published the “final update” to a three-year “living, rapid review” of research on mask effectiveness against COVID infection, which concluded masks in healthcare and community settings “may be associated with a small reduction in risk” — 10-18% — but that the evidence is weak.

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Commentary: The Nonsensical ‘Holy Climate Panacea’ Triad of More Wind, Solar, and Electric Cars is Maddening

This list could be closer to 50 but let’s just stick to a handful of them. I literally live in this business every day, and I’m just so confused.

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