A judge has temporarily blocked California from implementing a new law that would raise wages for fast food workers.

“As you know, our hard-working, patriotic Congressional staffers are integral to the functioning of the House of Representatives: ensuring this institution can effectively carry out our legislative and constituent responsibilities,” Pelosi said in a letter.

Insider and several other news organizations have identified 77 members of Congress who've recently failed to properly report their financial trades as mandated by the Stop Trading on Congressional Knowledge Act of 2012, also known as the STOCK Act.

Congress passed the law a decade ago to combat insider trading and conflicts of interest among their own members and force lawmakers to be more transparent about their personal financial dealings. A key provision of the law mandates that lawmakers publicly — and quickly — disclose any stock trade made by themselves, a spouse, or a dependent child.

But many members of Congress have not fully complied with the law. They offer excuses including ignorance of the law, clerical errors, and mistakes by an accountant. Insider has chronicled this widespread nature of this phenomenon in "Conflicted Congress," an ongoing reporting project initially published in December.

While lawmakers who violate the STOCK Act face a fine, the penalty is usually small — $200 is the standard amount — or waived by House or Senate ethics officials. Ethics watchdogs and even some members of Congress have called for stricter penalties or even a ban on federal lawmakers from trading individual stocks.

Reports continue to emerge about people in the Buffalo, NY, area who died in their cars as a result of arctic blast Elliot – even though it was known for days prior that the storm was coming.

Droves of officers left at least six Democrat-led major cities’ police forces in 2022, with many moving to different departments, multiple outlets reported.

The government of the Bahamas seized $3.5 billion of cryptocurrency assets belonging to FTX, the defunct exchange formerly led by Sam Bankman-Fried, after the company’s collapse.

Police in New York praised a man who broke into a school to shelter travelers stranded during last week’s winter storm that left dozens dead.

One of the worst years for stocks in recent decades came after President Joe Biden made a series of rosy predictions about their performance.

he decision by a federal appeals court Friday to uphold a Florida school district’s policy barring trans students from using the restroom corresponding to their chosen sex could set up a showdown in the U.S. Supreme Court over the contentious issue.

A MASSIVE, $1.7 TRILLION FUNDING BILL WAS APPROVED IN THE US CONGRESS LAST FRIDAY AND WILL BECOME LAW ONCE SIGNED BY PRESIDENT BIDEN.

And once that happens, it will bring into force proposed legislation introduced last year, INFORM Consumers Act, designed to regulate a sensitive segment of online marketplaces, delving deep into and disclosing sellers’ personal data under some circumstances.

Namely, the Integrity, Notification, and Fairness in Online Retail Marketplaces (INFORM) for Consumers Act will require e-commerce companies to collect, verify, and disclose “certain information from high-volume, third-party sellers.”

In case these third parties carry out 200 or more transactions with revenues reaching $5,000 or more during one year, platforms like Amazon, eBay, Facebook and others will acquire their bank account numbers, government issued ID, tax identification numbers, and contact information, the original proposal read.

As per the bill’s text, online marketplaces will make sure that consumers have access to sellers’ names and contact information, but also other unspecified data, included in product listings. This will include sellers’ phone number and email and physical address.

However, sellers will be able to protect their phone number and address if they communicate with buyers by answering their customer support via the marketplaces.

The man accused of breaking into Nancy Pelosi's San Francisco home and beating her husband with a hammer has pleaded not guilty to state charges.

David DePape, 42, appeared in a California court on Wednesday wearing a jail-issued orange sweater, sweatpants and a black facemask as he denied the charges against him for the October 28 attack on Paul Pelosi.

He only spoke once during the hearing, Mercury News reports, to confirm that he wanted to waive his right to a trial within 60 days.

Fox News’s Judge Jeanine Pirro, who previously served as a district attorney in New York, said Friday that sources revealed to her one of the pieces of evidence that were used to lead law enforcement officials to arrest a 28-year-old suspected of killing four college students in Idaho last month.

Assisting with a record flood of people crossing the U.S. southern border strained Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) resources as the number of deportations conducted by the agency lagged again in fiscal year 2022.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) issued a directive on Friday that will allow House members to pay their staff a salary higher than that of many lawmakers in the nation’s capital.

President Joe Biden gave full pardons to six individuals Friday who had already served their sentences for the crimes that they committed.

Created by the Affordable Care Act, a signature Obama administration legislative package often referred to as ObamaCare, the website facilitated more than 11.5 million Americans seeking insurance between November 1 and December 15, marking an 18% increase since the same period last year. Enrollment for the website, which serves as a private health insurance marketplace and offers subsidies for Americans who earn between one and four times the federal poverty line, remains open.

Former FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried visited senior advisers of President Joe Biden at least four times this year before his cryptocurrency empire imploded last month.

The GOP is expected to take over the US House of Representatives in 2023 next week. Here are the first 10 actions they should take after taking control.

Judicial Watch announced today that it received 115 pages of records from the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) revealing previously redacted locations of COVID-19 vaccine testing facilities in Shanghai, China. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) had claimed the name and location of the testing facilities were protected by the confidential commercial information exemption of the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA).

The records were obtained through a September 2021 FOIA lawsuit filed after the FDA, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Disease failed to respond to a June 7, 2021, FOIA request for all biodistribution studies and data for the COVID-19 vaccines (Judicial Watch v. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (No. 1:21-cv-02418)).

The newly unredacted documents reveal the following Pfizer/BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine studies’ locations:

A study by SpaceX to use private spacecraft to reboost the Hubble Space Telescope has NASA weighing options to give Hubble new life.

A study by SpaceX to use private spacecraft to reboost the Hubble Space Telescope has NASA weighing options. (Image credit: NASA/SpaceX)

NASA is looking deeper into the possibility of using a private spacecraft to lift the Hubble Space Telescope to new heights, giving the influential space observatory a new lease on life. 

On Dec. 22, the space agency issued a Request for Information regarding a non-exclusive SpaceX study earlier this year that suggested how the Hubble Space Telescope could be "reboosted" into a higher orbit.

NASA's request for information, which you can read here, comes as it continues to consider the space telescope's future and will remain open until Jan. 24, 2023.

The 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has found that Florida’s policy of separating school bathrooms based on biological sex is not discriminatory or unconstitutional.

The military’s standards for committed members and new recruits have dropped in 2022 as the services struggle to overcome challenges in filling the ranks.

Army recruiting plummeted in 2022, while the remaining services just made their recruiting goals for the fiscal year ending Sept. 30, according to Department of Defense (DOD) data shared with the Daily Caller News Foundation. The military is scrambling to adjust policies in a way that attracts more recruits, prompting some lowering of physical fitness and academic standards that could negatively impact military readiness, a military expert told the DCNF.

“The military and the administration are trying to overcome the greatest recruiting challenge they have ever faced by reducing certain standards,” Thomas Spoehr, director of the Heritage Foundation’s Center for National Defense, told the DCNF. (RELATED: The Military Vaccine Mandate Has Been Overturned, But Unvaccinated Troops Still Risk Reprisal)

The Navy opened up the service to more prospective sailors who score at minimum levels on entrance examinations that test physical and mental aptitude on Dec. 5, Cmdr. David Benham, a Navy Recruiting Command spokesperson, told Military.com. New guidelines will allow 7,500 recruits, or roughly 20% of the new active duty enlisted cohort, from the lowest acceptable aptitude level to join.

While the Navy met its fiscal year 2022 recruiting goal with a surplus of just 42 sailors, the target for 2023 raises the ceiling by an additional 4,000 new applicants, according to Military.com. Officials insisted the change did not reflect a lowering of standards.

“As we continue to navigate a challenging recruiting environment, changing the AFQT requirement removes a potential barrier to enlistment, allowing us to widen the pool of potential recruits and creating opportunities for personnel who wish to serve,” Benham told the outlet.

A statute of the late Democrat Rep. John Lewis will be erected where a Confederate monument once stood in Georgia.

Government-weaponized public health: Disease used to control populations is like tear gas is used to control crowds.

Representative-elect George Santos made headlines this week when it was revealed he embellished nearly every detail in his resume while running for Congress.

NC State play-by-play announcer Gary Hahn has been suspended indefinitely for comments he made while calling the Duke’s Mayo Bowl, per the university.

A pro-trans organization is pushing for “trans and non-binary”-inclusive math curriculums that advance gender ideology.

The Gay, Lesbian, Straight Education Network (GLSEN) exists to try adding radical gender theory into school policies and curriculums. But the organization is not just focused on health and history classes or policies surrounding sports and bathrooms but is now pushing for “trans and non-binary”-inclusive math curriculums. 

GLSEN made its case for ideologically motivated math classes in an article on their website called “How Do We Make Math Class More Inclusive of Trans and Non-Binary Identities?” 

The article claims that “Mathematics educators play an important part in reversing this trend by creating inclusive environments for LGBTQ students and trans and non-binary students in particular.”

Webmaster addition: Male math: 2+2=4

Female math: 2+2=4

Gay math: 2+2=4

Straight math: 2+2=4

Male-to-female math: 2+2=4

Female-to-male math: 2+2=4

I am so confused math: 2+2=4

 

A federal civil rights investigation has been opened into the University of Southern California (USC) Keck School of Medicine for discriminating against students based on their race.