Norfolk Southern Reaches $310 Million Settlement with EPA, DOJ over East Palestine Derailment

Norfolk Southern reached a $310 million settlement with the Environmental Protection Agency and the Department of Justice on Thursday over a train derailment in East Palestine, Ohio, last year.

The settlement, which has yet to be approved by the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Ohio, requires Norfolk Southern to spend an estimated $235 million for clean-up, $30 million for water quality monitoring, $25 million for a 20-year community health program, and $6 million to prioritize addressing historical pollution through a “waterways remediation plan,” reported the Washington Examiner.

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Commentary: 2024 Is America’s Last Chance to End the Obama-Biden Anti-American Revolution

President Joe Biden with former president Barack Obama

Given the realities of the past three years of the Biden Administration, this article expands on the thesis we have made in these pages that the American presidential election of 2024 will be the most important since 1860. That is not hyperbole, but a recognition of the grave conditions the American people face—these are matters of life and death for the country. Like in 1860, the election on November 5, 2024, will determine the course of history and whether or not the United States survives as a constitutional republic. While the deep roots of this crisis have been many decades in the making, the immediate causes are found in the Biden administration’s unconstitutional, illegal, reckless, and revolutionary actions against President Trump, his advisors, the leaders and supporters of the Make America Great Again movement—and ultimately the American people.

At root, this radical neo-Marxist revolution started under the Obama administration with the declaration to “fundamentally transform” America and has continued under the Biden administration, which has implemented and executed the tenets of that revolution across all aspects of the United States, our government and against the citizenry. This has taken many forms, but the most important has been, and continues to be, the permanent weaponization of government against political opponents to cause their defeat, to decapitate their political movement, and to coerce and demoralize their members and supporters so that there is no challenge to their power. The tactics employed against President Trump have been specifically designed by the totalitarian left to interfere in this presidential election by consuming his time and draining resources away from his campaign in this critically important election year. The raids, indictments, trials, and gag orders against a former president—and leading 2024 presidential candidate—demonstrate that these neo-Marxist totalitarians will violate the constitutional rights of the most prominent political figure in American politics in this century. The direct and stark implication is that if this can happen to Trump, then it can happen to all Americans.

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Supreme Court Rules South Carolina Did Not Racially Gerrymander Congressional District Map

The Supreme Court ruled 6-3 Thursday that a lower court “clearly erred” when it held that South Carolina racially gerrymandered its congressional district map.

The majority held that the “circumstantial evidence falls far short of showing that race, not partisan preferences, drove the districting process” behind the creation of the map.

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Commentary: Most U.S. Population Growth Last Year Occurred Outside of Largest Cities

There are 124 cities with a population over 200,000 in the U.S. According to the U.S. Census Bureau’s population estimates for last year, over 90 percent of the U.S. population growth last year took place outside of its 124 largest cities. About a third of those cities lost population last year.  The total growth in the population of cities with over 200,000 residents grew by .23 percent, less than half of what the U.S. grew last year.

Roughly a third of those that lost population were located in New York and California. The three largest cities in the U.S., New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago, all lost population again in 2023. Between the three cities, over 700,000 people have left since the 2020 census. New York is by far the biggest loser at 546,000. That is about 6.2 percent of its 2020 population.

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Obama State Department Blocked FBI from Arresting Iranian Suspects in WMD Probe, Senators Say

Obama Kerry Iran Negotiations in 2015

The senators claimed the reason for the State Department’s interference was because of ongoing negotiations related to the Obama administration’s Iran nuclear deal, which former President Barack Obama signed in 2015.

Republican Sens. Chuck Grassley and Ron Johnson unveiled evidence Wednesday that former Secretary of State John Kerry’s State Department “actively interfered” with the FBI’s attempts to arrest people suspected of being in the United States illegally to support Iran’s efforts to create weapons of mass destruction.

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Republican Governors Sign Letter Opposing WHO Treaty

Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp and South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster (composite image)

The Republican governors of two dozen states, including Georgia and South Carolina, penned a letter to President Joe Biden opposing the World Health Organization’s proposed “Pandemic Agreement,” which they said could “undermine national sovereignty” and states’ rights.

The state executives argue the treaty “would seek to elevate the WHO from an advisory body to a global authority in public health.” They contend the proposed accord could also allow the WHO to establish “a global surveillance infrastructure” and force participants to censor free speech.

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CIA Prevented Investigators from Interviewing Hunter Biden Lawyer, New IRS Whistleblower Docs Say

Kevin Morris

A new cache of documents from the IRS whistleblowers released Wednesday by the House Ways and Means Committee show how the Central Intelligence Agency directly intervened to prevent the IRS investigators from interviewing Hunter Biden lawyer and benefactor Kevin Morris.

The CIA’s involvement in the case was first suggested in earlier this year when the House Judiciary and Oversight Committees wrote a letter to Director William Burns that revealed impeachment investigators had at least one whistleblower who alleged the spy agency tried to interfere with a witness interview in the case, Just the News previously reported.

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Smithfield Releases Debut Album, ‘Country with Heart’

Smithfield

I first heard the duo Smithfield in 2018 on Sirius XM’s The Highway when their song “Hey Whiskey” was a big hit. Comprised of vocalists Trey Smith and Jennifer Fielder, they are lifelong friends who grew up near each other.

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