PrairiePundit

 National Review: ... This week’s events also puts the safety precautions of private schools in the spotlight. Private schools face both regulatory and financial hurdles to developing safety plans that are comparable to their public school peers. To dive deeper into these challenges and others, National Review spoke to Dr. Jeff Walton and Dr. Larry Taylor, leaders at two of the country’s largest Christian school associations. “We are grieving,” explained Taylor, the president of Association of Christian Schools International, an organization that has thousands of members schools. “Every Christian school leader the next morning, they were having meetings with their teams,” Taylor explained, adding that he is having regular Zoom calls with Christian school leaders throughout the world. According to Walton, the executive director of the American Association of Christian Schools , which has over 700 member schools, “at almost every school, there have been meetings of safety teams and schoo

 PJ Media: Harvard Law professor emeritus Alan Dershowitz says the indictment of Donald Trump is the “worst case of prosecutorial abuse I have ever seen.” And he’s not the only one calling out this raw exercise of political power over the rule of law. Thursday night, Trump’s attorney echoed that sentiment,  declaring , “today the rule of law in the United States of America died.” Trump was charged in a sealed indictment handed up on Thursday that is believed to concern a non-disclosure agreement signed by porn actress Stormy Daniels, which the legacy media calls “hush money.” Daniels was paid $130,000 by Trump’s attorney Michael Cohen. Both Cohen and Daniels have declared that Trump didn’t make the payment himself and that there was no personal relationship in 2006 between Trump and the x-rated porn actress. Daniels has since reneged on her statement and, of course, the NDA. Dershowitz said on the Sean Hannity program on Fox News that Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg is playing

 Fox News: The Biden administration has led "the largest speech censorship operation in recent history" by working with social media companies to suppress and censor information later acknowledged as truthful," former Missouri attorney general Eric Schmitt will tell the House Weaponization Committee Thursday. Schmitt, now a Republican senator from Missouri, is expected to testify alongside Louisiana Attorney General Jeff Landry and former Missouri deputy attorney general for special litigation, D. John Sauer. LAWSUIT FILED AGAINST BIDEN, TOP OFFICIALS FOR 'COLLUDING' WITH BIG TECH TO CENSOR SPEECH ON HUNTER, COVID The three witnesses will discuss the findings of their federal government censorship lawsuit, Louisiana and Missouri v. Biden et al—which they filed in May 2022 and which they describe as "the most important free speech lawsuit of this generation." The testimony comes after Missouri and Louisiana filed a lawsuit against the Biden administratio

 AP: House Republicans on Thursday approved a sprawling energy package that seeks to undo virtually all of President Joe Biden's agenda to address climate change. The legislation would sharply increase domestic production of oil, natural gas and coal, and ease permitting restrictions that delay pipelines, refineries and other projects. It would boost production of critical minerals such as lithium, nickel and cobalt that are used in electric vehicles, computers, cellphones and other products. By a 225-204 vote, the House sent the measure to the Senate, where Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., called it “dead on arrival.” Four Democrats joined with all but one Republican to support the bill. Biden has threatened to veto the bill, saying it would replace “pro-consumer policies” adopted in the landmark climate law approved last year “with a thinly veiled license to pollute.'' The bill would roll back Democratic investments in clean energy and ”pad oil and gas company prof

 Just the News: Durham bombshell: Prosecutor unveils smoking gun FBI text message, 'joint venture' to smear Trump Special Counsel John Durham revealed he has unearthed a text message showing Hillary Clinton campaign lawyer Michael Sussmann falsely told the FBI he was not working on behalf of any client when he delivered anti-Trump research. Special Counsel John Durham is revealing new smoking gun evidence, a text message that shows a Clinton campaign lawyer lied to the FBI, while putting the courts on notice he is prepared to show the effort to smear Donald Trump with now-disproven Russia collusion allegations was a "conspiracy." In a bombshell court filing late Monday night, Durham for the first time suggested Hillary Clinton's campaign, her researchers and others formed a "joint venture or conspiracy" for the purpose of weaving the collusion story to harm Trump's election chances and then the start of his presidency. "These parties acted as

  Federalist: ... Luzerne County was coal country and once a Democrat stronghold , before Donald Trump ran for president in 2016, when the county voted Republican. The county’s election administration in 2022 was, according to the lawsuit, a “catastrophic failure.” More than 40 precincts had an insufficient number of ballots, many running out early in the morning on Election Day. The county implausibly blamed high voter interest, but Pennsylvania law requires counties to have enough ballots for every registered voter. Election workers were sent scrambling to office supply stores for paper, and were left untrained for the disastrous day. A court had to intervene to allow a few more hours of voting. Judge Lesa Gelb wrote in her order, “Voters in Luzerne County through no fault of their own, were disenfranchised and denied the fundamental right to vote.” Left-wing groups pressured the county election board to certify the election results, even though the first vote to certify failed to pa

 Daily Mail: EXCLUSIVE: Hunter Biden was asked to use his FBI contacts to help his Chinese business partner arrested for bribery and money laundering - as whistleblower claims president's son had 'mole' agent who tipped them off to investigation ...   The news comes as  a whistleblower claims Hunter   used a top former or current FBI official code-named 'One Eye' to funnel secret bureau information to his Chinese business partners. Patrick Ho – convicted of bribery and money laundering in 2018 – was secretary general of CEFC, the Chinese oil giant Hunter partnered with, and which sent the Biden family more than $5million. The first son described Ho as the 'f***ing spy chief of China' in a May 2018 recorded conversation on his abandoned laptop, and court documents show Ho was under surveillance by federal law enforcement in an espionage-related investigation. But that didn't stop Hunter taking a $1million wire payment to represent Ho as his attorney befor

 Guy Benson: ... Whatever you think of Trump, the indictment reeks. The fact that it's been sought is plainly and outrageously political, no matter how hard certain media outlets gaslight . With the caveat that it's currently sealed, and we haven't seen all of its substance, it's thus far been widely and rightly seen as a profoundly feeble case, with even the New York Times conceding that the legal theory behind it rests on a novel, "untested," and "risky" bank shot , requiring a convoluted effort to upgrade a possible misdemeanor into a low-level felony -- all spearheaded by a partisan ideologue who's notorious for downgrading criminal charges. Given the reality that the feds looked at this exact same set of facts and declined to pursue charges, even as they're coming after Trump from other angles, says it all. This is a deep blue city prosecutor weaponizing the law against a prominent member of the opposing party. It's an abuse of

 Ed Morrissey: Come on, man.  You bought Joe Biden’s effluvium on deficit reduction after more than a year of his fronting the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan and the $5.5 trillion-plus Build Back Better proposal. You stood by while Biden signed an EO imposing onerous costs and regulatory red tape on energy exploration and production. Now you want us to believe that you’re shocked,  shocked  that Joe Biden didn’t take deficit reduction and domestic energy?  And  that Biden isn’t anything more than partisan demagogue?   Apparently so : When President Biden and I spoke before Congress passed the Inflation Reduction Act last summer, we agreed that the bill was designed to pay down our national debt and shore up America’s energy security. It was designed to generate $738 billion in new revenue, with more than $238 billion dedicated to debt reduction, the first serious piece of legislation in more than two decades that the Congressional Budget Office estimated would have done that. Yet i

 Fox Business: A coalition of 21 state attorneys general sent a stark warning to dozens of financial institutions and asset managers, warning them against pursuing woke environmental and social initiatives . In a letter sent Thursday to 53 of the nation's largest financial institutions, which collectively manage trillions of dollars worth of assets, the attorneys general threatened to take legal action if the firms veer from the best interests of their clients while pushing social priorities . The effort, led by Montana, Utah and Louisiana, comes ahead of proxy season during which most companies hold annual shareholder meetings where they vote on key policy initiatives. "This ESG nonsense is filtering into a lot of our states and the way they're doing it is really, really concerning and probably flagrantly illegal," Montana Attorney General Austin Knudsen told Fox News Digital in an interview. "Pushing it through these asset managers and through these proxy votes

 Fox News: A Florida grand jury that was empaneled after a request by Gov. Ron DeSantis last year is accusing the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) of a "complete abdication" of responsibility for the welfare of unaccompanied migrant children transported to the state -- amid a broader investigation into the federal government’s rehousing of UACs. The grand jury report concluded that HHS’ Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) is "facilitating the forced migration, sale, and abuse of foreign children, and some of our fellow Florida residents are (in some cases unwittingly) funding and incentivizing it for primarily economic reasons." DeSantis filed a petition last year for the Florida Supreme Court to "impanel a statewide grand jury to examine international human smuggling networks that bring aliens to the southern border, and ultimately to Florida." The 46-page report is the latest report to come from the jury, which has already released two su

 Washington Post: Red America is growing because blue America is shrinking Americans are fleeing high taxes and control-freak liberalism.  It also helps that the Red States tend to have better weather.

 Daily Signal: House Speaker Kevin McCarthy promised Thursday evening to hold Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg accountable for his role in indicting former President Donald Trump . “Alvin Bragg has irreparably damaged our country in an attempt to interfere in our Presidential election,” McCarthy, R-Calif., said in a statement Thursday. “As he routinely frees violent criminals to terrorize the public, he weaponized our sacred system of justice against President Donald Trump.” “The American people will not tolerate this injustice, and the House of Representatives will hold Alvin Bragg and his unprecedented abuse of power to account,” the House speaker promised. ... “This is Political Persecution and Election Interference at the highest level in history,” the former president said in a written statement Thursday evening slamming the indictment. “From the time I came down the golden escalator at Trump Tower, and even before I was sworn in as your President of the United States, th

 ISW: ... Putin remains unlikely to deploy newly conscripted troops to participate in combat in Ukraine due to concerns for the stability of his regime. Chairman of the Russian State Duma Defense Committee Andrey Kartapolov stated on March 30 that spring conscripts will not deploy to Russian-occupied territories in Ukraine during the spring 2023 conscription cycle.[5] Kartapolov also noted that Russian forces will not conscript men from occupied territories. Kartapolov‘s statements may be true given that ISW has not observed the Russian military use conscripts on any significant scale on the frontlines since the first months of the war and especially since the sinking of the Russian Black Sea Fleet’s flagship, the Moskva, which had some conscripted sailors aboard.[6] Putin’s use of conscripts during the winter-spring period of 2022 sparked social tensions in Russia, and Putin is unlikely to risk his regime’s stability by deploying newly conscripted servicemen to the frontlines.[7] The

 Just the News: 'Unacceptable incompetence': CDC made dozens of basic data errors on COVID, epidemiologists find FDA evidence for full approval of COVID antiviral Paxlovid, known for "rebound" infections in top federal officials, found wanting by scientists, including NIAID researcher. The CDC found itself hoist with its own petard by making 25 basic statistical and numerical errors related to COVID-19, particularly with regard to children, while purporting to expose COVID vaccine misinformation , according to an analysis led by University of California San Francisco epidemiologists. The preprint , which has not yet been peer-reviewed, documented 20 errors that "exaggerated the severity of the COVID-19 situation" and three that "simultaneously exaggerated and downplayed" severity, while one each was neutral or exaggerated vaccine risks. ... I think they underplayed the side effects of the vaccine and overrated its efficacy.  One of the big lies was

 Robert Spencer: During the Trump administration, the Islamic Republic of Iran was feeling the effects of global sanctions and was severely restricted in its abilities to pursue its longstanding practice of engaging in and funding terrorism, either directly or through its proxies, such as Hamas and Hizballah. That was, however, a long time ago now, and the newly emboldened Iranian regime is more aggressive than ever against American forces. Could they possibly sense weakness at the top in Washington? Inconceivable! On Tuesday, Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) asked Biden regime Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, “How many attacks has Iran or its proxies launched against American positions in Iran and Syria, uh, since Joe Biden took office?” Austin answered, “There’s been, uh, about 83 attacks, I think, uh, since, uh, in the last several years.” Cotton responded, “That’s a lot of attacks over two years. How many times have we retaliated against Iran or its proxies?” Austin said: “We’ve, we’ve lau

 NY Post: ... Biden promised that “we’re seeing real indicatiors [sic]” that “we are turning the tide” in favor of democracy around the globe. Practically no one not on Biden’s payroll agrees. Democracy last year “ declined around the world for the 17th consecutive year,” per Freedom House. Twice as many nations are veering “toward authoritarianism” as toward democracy, The Economist says . Most shocking: America is now categorized as less free than Mongolia, Mauritius and 56 other nations, according to Freedom House (funded by the US government). Despite Biden’s bluster, even US government officials fear the summit will be an “inconsequential talk shop,” reports The Washington Post . ... The Biden bluster is coming from the same guy who wants to censor Americans who disagree with him. 

 Jacob Siegal: In 1950, Sen. Joseph McCarthy claimed that he had proof of a communist spy ring operating inside the government. Overnight, the explosive accusations blew up in the national press, but the details kept changing. Initially, McCarthy said he had a list with the names of 205 communists in the State Department; the next day he revised it to 57. Since he kept the list a secret, the inconsistencies were beside the point. The point was the power of the accusation, which made McCarthy’s name synonymous with the politics of the era. For more than half a century, McCarthyism stood as a defining chapter in the worldview of American liberals: a warning about the dangerous allure of blacklists, witch hunts, and demagogues. Until 2017, that is, when another list of alleged Russian agents roiled the American press and political class. A new outfit called Hamilton 68 claimed to have discovered hundreds of Russian-affiliated accounts that had infiltrated Twitter to sow chaos and help Don

 Fox News: Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., on Tuesday warned that America "is under attack" from Mexican drug cartels, and urged fellow lawmakers and the head of Homeland Security that the U.S. needs "to be at war with them" in response to the fentanyl crisis. "What are we going to do about the poisoning of America?" Graham said at a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing, which had DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas as a witness. "So here's what I would say: America is under attack. Our nation is being attacked by foreign powers called drug cartels in Mexico." Graham noted that around 70,000 Americans die a year due to fentanyl – which is produced in Mexico using Chinese precursors and then smuggled across the U.S. land border. Cartels facilitate both the production and the transport of fentanyl into the U.S. MEXICAN SEIZURE OF US COMPANY'S FACILITY MARKS LATEST DIPLOMATIC FUROR AMID TENSIONS OVER FENTANYL, CARTELS "When the Japanese attack

 Fox News: The Biden administration has led "the largest speech censorship operation in recent history" by working with social media companies to suppress and censor information later acknowledged as truthful," former Missouri attorney general Eric Schmitt will tell the House Weaponization Committee Thursday. Schmitt, now a Republican senator from Missouri, is expected to testify alongside Louisiana Attorney General Jeff Landry and former Missouri deputy attorney general for special litigation, D. John Sauer. LAWSUIT FILED AGAINST BIDEN, TOP OFFICIALS FOR 'COLLUDING' WITH BIG TECH TO CENSOR SPEECH ON HUNTER, COVID The three witnesses will discuss the findings of their federal government censorship lawsuit, Louisiana and Missouri v. Biden et al—which they filed in May 2022 and which they describe as "the most important free speech lawsuit of this generation." The testimony comes after Missouri and Louisiana filed a lawsuit against the Biden administratio

 Washington Post: Nashville shooting exploited by right to escalate anti-trans rhetoric Transgender people are rarely the perpetrators of mass shootings, which are overwhelmingly carried out by cisgender men, say criminal justice experts. I have not noticed any escalation of anti-trans rhetoric.  I do not come in contact with trans people as a general rule and can recall only meeting one who had been surgically modified.  To my knowledge, that person never engaged in mass murder.  I have noticed that the left likes to use the term "cisgender" to describe normal men and women.  I find that odd.

 NY Times: Russia Detains Wall Street Journal Reporter, Accusing Him of Spying The newspaper “vehemently” denied the allegations against Evan Gershkovich, an American, whose arrest is likely to escalate U.S.-Russia tensions. I doubt Gershkovich was spying.  He was probably just doing his job of asking questions and taking notes for a story. 

 Zero Hedge: ...  The materials revealed during the hearing show that U.S. Marshals were explicitly directed not to arrest protestors at the homes of Supreme Court (SCOTUS) justices. “People want justice to be blind,” said freshman Sen. Katie Britt (R-Ala.), who unveiled the findings during a hearing of the Senate Appropriations Committee. Attorney General Merrick Garland appeared before the panel to testify on the DOJ side of President Joe Biden’s proposed budget. Section 1507 of U.S. Code prohibits the picketing of Supreme Court (SCOTUS) justices or other federal judges to change the outcome of a legal case. But when protestors demonstrated at the homes of conservative justices to protest their leaked abortion decision in June 2022, U.S. Marshals made few arrests in connection to the statute. This, Britt revealed, was not a mistake. Rather, she showed that a DOJ memo had directly dissuaded agents from making arrests on the basis of Section 1507, instructing them to arrest protestors

 Red States: ... Using the publicly available data, O’Keefe headed to Maryland to track down some of the donors from that state and confirm with them if they had indeed been making thousands of small donations a year to ActBlue. For example, one senior citizen was recorded as making over 1,000 individual donations in the year 2022 for a total of a little over $18,000. That would mean she was donating to ActBlue three times a day for an entire year. When asked if she had purposefully donated so frequently to the organization, the Maryland senior told O’Keefe that while she had donated a few dollars here and there, she absolutely had not donated that much money, nor that many times. ... The woman seemed almost tickled at the idea that she might have that much money to spend on a political candidate. An Arizona resident, age 80, was recorded as having made 18,672 individual contributions for a total of $170,221.37. The data shows her making contributions up to ten times a day at times. W

 Athena Horne: “President” Joe Biden’s obsession with ice cream has been front and center since his basement-gimp campaign days. It’s humanizing and disarming, his handlers must assume, much like dressing up child-grooming behaviors with rainbows and story hours. And in recent days, Biden has been playing up his food fetish more than ever. My colleague Robert Spencer  wrote about  the man’s incredibly inappropriate monologue about his favorite frozen treat on Monday when he was supposed to be addressing a massacre of Christian elementary school students and staff. It was so off the hook, you have to see it to believe it: “My name is Joe Biden. I’m Dr. Jill Biden’s husband,” began the nation’s leader. (For some reason, the audience was as loopy as he was and erupted in laughter throughout the odd preamble.) Biden got right to the important business at hand: “And I eat Jeni’s Ice Cream, chocolate chip. I came down because I heard there was chocolate chip ice cream. By the way, I have a w

 ISW: ... Ukrainian Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov stated on March 27 that Ukrainian forces may be planning to launch a counteroffensive in April or May depending on weather conditions. In an interview with Estonian news outlet ERR, Reznikov stated that the Ukrainian General Staff might decide to use recently received Leopard 2 tanks in a possible spring counterattack.[19] Leopard 2 and Challenger 2 tanks arrived in Ukraine on March 27, and US officials announced the acceleration of the deployment of Abrams tanks and Patriot missile systems to Ukraine on March 21.[20] The arrival of equipment in Ukraine likely sets conditions for a Ukrainian counteroffensive, although a delay is likely between the arrival of new equipment in Ukraine’s ability to use it in a counteroffensive. ... Russian forces conducted limited ground attacks along the Kupyansk-Svatove-Kreminna line on March 29. The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Russian forces conducted unsuccessful ground attacks near Krokh