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SO DUMB: California Now Planning to Force Companies to Disclose ‘Historic Links to Slavery’

California has seen a mass exodus of companies from their state in recent years due to ridiculously high taxes, burdensome regulations, and the draconian lock down policies of Gavin Newsom during Covid-19.

Are they trying to fix any of this in order to retain the businesses that haven’t fled? Nope. In fact, they are about to make things even worse.

California is now planning to force companies to disclose any historic ties to slavery. Is Governor Newsom aware that California never even had slavery?

From the New York Post:

The bill is facing pushback from insurance companies, which argue it largely repeats an earlier California law requiring insurers to disclose past policies issued to slaveholders that covered the death or injury of enslaved people.

New York Life Insurance Company, Aetna Life Insurance Company and American International Group, known as AIG, were among the companies that disclosed ties to enslaved people and slaveholders.

Some reparations advocates have viewed the measure as a significant step forward, while others have questioned how much of an impact it would actually have.

The bill, known as Assembly Bill 2599, would require companies with more than $100 million in annual worldwide sales to search their records for evidence that they, their predecessors or subsidiaries bought or sold enslaved people or provided financial support for those transactions, including through insurance or loans.

The measure would only take effect if the Legislature sets aside funding for it, a requirement added through late amendments.

Once funding is allocated, the California Civil Rights Department would be required to create a digital platform for the disclosures.

Companies are going to keep leaving, and who can blame them?

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India’s Modi Presses Putin to Wrap Up Ukraine Invasion: ‘Move Away from Endless War’

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi urged Russian strongman Vladimir Putin to “move away from endless war” and find a resolution to his ongoing invasion of Ukraine during a meeting on Monday.

The two — along with the heads of state of several other neighboring countries, most prominently China and Iran — are in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan, to attend a high-level summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO). The China-led, Central Asia-based SCO is a loosely affiliated security and common interests group, sometimes described as an attempted counterweight to NATO but lacking the strict membership requirements and mutual defense responsibilities of that group. Modi, Putin, and Chinese dictator Xi Jinping are all expected to meet Iran’s president, Masoud Pezeshkian, to discuss that country’s war with the United States during the span of the SCO summit, but appear to have prioritized meeting with each other.

Both Indian and Russian media emphasized that Modi used his time with Putin to discourage him from continuing the Ukraine invasion. The comments were notably more pointed than past remarks by the Hindu nationalist leader, who has rejected attempts to sanction or otherwise economically isolate Russia in response to it belligerence and remains a key Russian oil partner.

“Every day spent in war sets humanity back, whereas every step taken towards peace fills humanity with new hope and enthusiasm. We must move away from endless war towards an end to the war. This is essential for the well-being of humanity,” Modi told Putin, according to India’s Economic Times.

“We have consistently discussed the issue of Ukraine. When we met previously, you briefed me in detail on all aspects of the matter. As you know, India supports all efforts towards peace and will continue to do so,” his comments continued.

Modi separately published an image on social media of his meeting with Putin in which he only vaguely suggested conversation linked to Ukraine and emphasized the bilateral relationship with India.

“Discussed the full range of the India-Russia Special and Privileged Strategic Partnership. It is gladdening to see significant progress across various sectors in recent years,” he wrote. “Focus areas for the India-Russia friendship remain energy, innovation, space, fertilisers and people-to-people linkages.”

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Trump says communities that reject data centers ‘want to end up being backwards and poor’ — President claims China ‘could not be happier’ with AI data center backlash in the US

Donald Trump doesn’t appear to be a fan of the data center backlash that has swept the nation. Posting on his Truth Social platform, the President said that communities that reject data centers only do so because “they want to end up being backwards and poor,” and posited that China “could not be happier with this anti Data Center movement.” The comment comes amid a wide, albeit unorganized, pushback to data center buildouts in the United States that’s left local communities and municipalities reckoning with an unanticipated and rapid infrastructure buildout.

Local pushback has been widespread and consistent across the country. Earlier this month, an Amazon data center came under fire for circumventing public feedback based on old laws. Since April, leaders across the nation have received an elevated number of credible death threats related to data centers since April. And last month, the number of local bans on data center developments crossed over 500 within the United States.

The President says to “let Data Reign” if communities “want to be successful and rich, with far lower taxes and jobs all over the place.” Presumably, the President missed a comma after “taxes” and does not mean that data centers will lower the number of jobs available. The economic argument surrounding data centers is a tough issue to quantify, though it’s not completely detached from reality.

A July study from Georgia Tech found that data center developments increase local employment by 3.5%, total wages by 5%, business establishments by 4.7%, and median household income by 1.9%. Further, the developments reduce unemployment rates. Critically, however, the study found that these benefits mainly show up in metropolitan areas, calling the benefits in rural areas “negligible.” The study also highlights that data centers often employ fewer than 100 permanent workers, with specialized services “imported from outside the country.”

The research also looked into trade-offs with electricity prices, finding that prices rise an average of 5% after a data center is built in a community.

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Rahm Emanuel: ‘I Don’t Consider Democratic Socialists Part of the Democratic Party’

During this week’s broadcast of “Fox News Sunday,” former Obama chief of staff Rahm Emanuel rejected overtures from so-called Democrat Socialists seeking a takeover of the Democratic Party.

Emanuel said the party was not a target for a takeover and said he did not consider Democrat Socialists a part of the Democratic Party.

“I want to get your take,” host Shannon Bream said. “You know, Bernie Sanders is part of this group too, and he says, quote, ‘People are sick and tired of the Rahm Emanuels.’ They say the energy is not with the people of the past. It’s moving forward with socialism. Your response?”
Emanuel replied, “Well, here’s the thing. I don’t consider Democratic Socialists part of the Democratic Party. About four weeks ago, they had a convention in Chicago, separate party. They believe in defunding the police, letting prisoners out of prisons, opening the borders, eliminating the Pentagon. If you’re so confident people want that, I’ll see you in November. Put it on the ballot. Let’s go run as a separate party. The Democratic Party is not open to be taken over. Now, you have a progressive wing and a pragmatic wing. Now, we agree that the system is rigged against working-class, middle-class families. Agree with that. How do we fix that problem to make sure that the American dream of owning a home, saving for your retirement, saving for your kids’ education and that your health care is not a nightmare, but a peace of mind?”

“How do we get that?” he continued. “Well, we’re going to have a good, solid debate about that. And I’m for that debate. I give the progressives some credit. They have been out there with ideas. Some I agree, some I disagree with. But the pragmatic wing, which is one of the reasons I’ve been talking about education, banning anybody from public office after — and all three branches of government at the age of 75, you are done. Banning social media for kids under 16, what you have to do to invest in our energy infrastructure to make sure we’re a 21st-century economy with a 21st-century infrastructure, we owe a good, solid intellectual debate. Now, I happen to think President Clinton and President Obama, who I work for, and Nancy Pelosi, who I helped make speaker, they led the right way. The last time there was a minimum wage increase, Nancy Pelosi had the gavel. There’s no way you’re going to get there turning a blue district to midnight blue. You got to do it by flipping red districts to blue, winning red states and turning them blue. That is how it happens.”

“Now, examples of this — you know, Senator Nelson from Nebraska was a critical vote for passing ACA health care and universal coverage for people with preexisting conditions,” Emanuel added. That didn’t happen from blue states. That happened because we had a Democratic senator in a red state. Joe Manchin was key to the IRA under Joe Biden, major energy policy. He was a Democrat in West Virginia. You have to win areas. Now, look, simple — seven states, 500,000 voters across those seven states determined who was president in the last three presidential elections. You’ve got to win in areas that are not safe blue areas, but persuade independent voters to come and find alignment with the Democratic Party. And I happen to think an energized, clear idea about the future. As I said, if I decide to run, I’m not a peacetime consigliere. I’m a wartime general. I win elections and make policies happen, like universal coverage, like making sure our kids have a good education and take on the failures of the establishment, whether that’s in the government or in the private sector.”

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HOW CURIOUS: Democrats Sure Don’t Want to Campaign With Joe Biden and Kamala Harris

With the midterm elections approaching, you would think that Democrats would want to campaign with the last two members of their party to occupy the White House.

Not this time.

Dems running for election in 2026 want absolutely nothing to do with Joe Biden and Kamala Harris. The Gateway Pundit recently reported on how this is happening in Iowa, but it is happening all over the place. Dems are avoiding Biden and Harris like the plague.

ABC News reports:

With less than 70 days until the midterm election, some Democrats running in the most conservative areas are sending a clear message to former President Joe Biden and former Vice President Kamala Harris: stay out of their races.

In Iowa, Democratic Senate nominee state Rep. Josh Turek — who has welcomed the support of former President Barack Obama and has twice won a seat in a district that voted for President Donald Trump — was asked if Harris should campaign for him. He simply said “No.”…

Alaska Democratic Senate nominee Mary Peltola recently distanced herself from Harris after her political action committee backed Peltola in a fundraising email.

“Mary isn’t seeking endorsements from anyone from the Lower 48 — her focus is and always will be Alaska,” Peltola’s campaign told The New York Times.

The blunt rejections, coming within days of each other in two states Trump carried by double digits in 2024, underscore a reality for Democrats: candidates fighting for independent and moderate Republican voters increasingly see the party’s brand and most recent presidential ticket as a liability.

Why would Democrats want to avoid this winning team? Didn’t Biden get 81 million votes in 2020? More than even Obama in 2008?

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The Long Shadow Of Judge Indira Talwani

This week, the Trump administration found itself in a familiar position: facing an injunction from Judge Indira Talwani of the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts. Indeed, it had just secured an order from the Supreme Court on its emergency docket lifting her earlier injunction on the U.S. Postal Service requiring voting lists to confirm U.S. citizenship.

The case against the executive order on mail-in ballots has reasonable arguments on both sides, although (as I have said previously) the challengers are likely to prevail in defeating the rule or at least delaying the policy until after the midterm elections. The Constitution gives states the primary responsibility over “the times, places, and manner of holding elections.”

However, the U.S. Postal Service is a federal agency, and the federal government does have a role in the funding and regulation of federal elections. More importantly, the Trump administration is arguing that it is not barring mail-in voting but merely imposing “modest informational requirements.” Non-citizens cannot vote in federal elections, and the new rule “does not displace a single state election law. And it need not and should not prevent a single voter from voting by mail.”

The controversy over Talwani is not necessarily the merits of her decision that the rule convenes the constitutional framework. Indeed, the Supreme Court did not rule on the merits and could well rule in favor of her interpretation.

The controversy is the pattern of sweeping injunctions by Talwani and a few other judges.

Litigants have been accused of forum-shopping by going to liberal, Democratically appointed judges to prevent Trump policies from being implemented in a wide array of areas, including immigration, elections, reduction in government bureaucracies, and foreign aid.

Like her colleague in Boston, U.S. District Court Judge Brian Murphy, Talwani is viewed by many as a one-stop-shop judge for forum-shopping. Both have issued hair-trigger injunctions, and both have been repeatedly reversed.

Talwani was reversed on Aug. 24 for imposing an injunction against the mail-in balloting policy. Her injunction was taken to be premature and without a legal injury, since the administration had not issued a formal rule. The truth is, the challengers had her at hello. She did not wait for a showing of a cognizable injury before issuing another injunction, because the decision appeared made before the case hit her own docket.

Previously, Talwani showed the same inclination in other cases.

For example, she issued an injunction against revoking the humanitarian parole program for hundreds of thousands of immigrants from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela. Her order was lifted on appeal.

She also issued an injunction to stop the Trump Administration from defunding Planned Parenthood. That order was also set aside on appeal.

Regardless of the outcome of this latest injunction, Talwani has offered the strongest case in favor of the expanded use of the emergency docket, also known as the “shadow docket.” Liberal law professors and litigants have bewailed the expanded use of this docket at the Supreme Court to resolve cases without the need for a long briefing and oral argument. However, judges like Talwani have created legitimate concerns over the use of the appellate system to slow or freeze new policies. This is why the “shadow docket” has become more prominent.

This year, confidential memoranda were leaked from the court on the use of the emergency docket and published by the New York Times. It was only the latest such strategic leak from a court that was once the paragon of confidentiality and civility.

The internal exchanges of the justices were illuminating as to the majority’s underlying reason for allowing this fast-track review. The immediate issue was a move by the Environmental Protection Agency to impose unlawful regulatory burdens on electric utilities despite a countervailing earlier ruling in Michigan v. EPA. Chief Justice Roberts believed (as did many) that the EPA was using the ongoing litigation to force utilities to spend billions of dollars to comply with new regulations that the Supreme Court had already rejected.

“In other words,” Roberts wrote, “the absence of stay allowed the agency to effectively implement an important program we held to be contrary to law.”

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Over 100 Girls Under 12 Identified as Likely Forced Marriage Victims in Britain

British government data has revealed that at least 100 children under the age of twelve have been identified over five years as likely to have been subjected to a forced marriage, which opponents have tied to mass migration.

A Freedom of Information request for Home Office figures made by the Press Association has disclosed that between 2021 and 2025, the Forced Marriage Unit received tips from family, friends, police, teachers, and social services of at least 100 girls 11-years-old or younger who were believed to be forced into getting married.

Of those identified, 27 of the girls were said to have been under the age of five when they were being set up for a forced marriage, The Telegraph reported.

While the data is obviously limited to cases in which tips were placed to the Forced Marriage Unit — which in and of themselves do not constitute definitive proof — it is also the case that the government does not always disclose data surrounding child marriage for fear of leading to the public identification of victims.

Indeed, according to the report, during one of the years between 2021 and 2025, there were fewer than five potential victims within each defined age bracket, and therefore the Home Office declined to disclose the data for the entire year, given that the limited number of entries would potentially make it easier to identify specific victims.

Reform UK Shadow Home Secretary Zia Yusuf attributed to the apparent rise in the number of forced child marriages to PM Boris Johnson’s post-Brexit migration reforms, which saw record waves of migrants flood into the country.

“This sudden rise in forced marriages tracks almost perfectly with the Boriswave, which saw the Tories import four million new people into the UK. The Conservatives will never be forgiven for this complete and utter betrayal,” he said.

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Georgia Cop Placed on Leave After Family’s Baby Donkey ‘HeeHaw’ is Shot and Killed During Search, Owner Says Officers Entered Pasture Without Permission

A family in Georgia is outraged after a Georgia police officer shot and killed their baby donkey named ‘HeeHaw’.

According to the donkey’s owner Hannah Israel, Georgia police entered her family’s pasture and killed HeeHaw after they perceived him as a threat.

In a post on Facebook Israel wrote, “At 12:45am cops entered my pasture searching for a missing person WITHOUT permission or warning and shot and killed my bottle raised BABY donkey.”

She added, “HeeHaw was raised in the house and did petting zoos he never knew a stranger. And was shot and killed in his OWN pasture for doing what donkeys do. Alerting to a stranger. There is no way this is legal! I will be taking legal action.”

Police entered on Israel’s pasture as they were searching for a missing child.

The Cedartown Police Department in Georgia has since placed an officer on leave and is investigating the shooting.

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Georgia Election Fraud Analyst Kevin Moncla Says DOJ And Harmeet Dillon Are Failing To Admit Georgia’s Elections Are Bad, Much Less Fix Them

When questioned online by State Senator Mark Finchem of Arizona about prosecutions of known election fraud in the 2020 election, well-known election fraud analyst Kevin Moncla had something to say, and it wasn’t pretty:

@RealMarkFinchem – Senator, I’m going to say the quiet part out loud- because we no longer have the luxury of time- and frankly- I’ve grown tired of good men (and women) doing nothing.

@CivilRights -under @HarmeetKDhillon – has failed in its objective and mandate. Despite her unwillingness to fight for the injustices @KariLake, @AbrahamHamadeh, and the good people of AZ endured, we all hoped Harmeet would rise to the occasion -as part of this administration- and restore integrity to this nation’s elections. For a number of reasons I can tell you that she is not even trying. Here’s an example-

Fulton County, Georgia is under federal criminal investigation as it relates to their administration of elections. Georgia’s elections are notoriously and historically not credible- no matter if you’re Stacey Abrams, David Perdue or Donald Trump. Yet Georgia is not even on Harmeet’s list of states to send monitors for the 2024 mid-terms. Here’s another- GA’s ballots are produced by a BMD with votes encoded in a QR code that the voter cannot verify (as required by HAVA). The President issued an executive order requiring the removal of QR codes from ballots- yet Harmeet refuses to act.

The voting system violates federal law- by using the QR codes that the President (and 90% of Republican voters) want removed from the ballot. The system has long-known security vulnerabilities (like providing the encryption keys in plain text) and defects that fail to ensure ballot secrecy (a ballot- and their votes- can be traced back to the voter)- yet the SOS has – for three and one-half years- refused to patch the system. I don’t mean to be disrespectful or knit-pick Harmeet, but if she’s not suing Georgia- then it’s time for her to go to the house.

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