Tag: south carolina

SNAP Junk Food Bans in Two States on Hold Due to Court Rulings

The battle over SNAP benefits might be being waged from state to state, but federal courts are part of the action, too.

Two states that had planned restrictions on the foods that can be purchased by those using Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program cards have put the moves on hold after a federal court ruled in favor of SNAP recipients in a case covering five other states, Newsweek reported Monday.

Six states still have restrictions in place.

SNAP, formerly known as “food stamps,” is a federally funded program administered by the individual states. It is overseen by the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

Some states restrict its use from purchasing junk food, such as sodas, candy, and some juices and energy drinks. Others have plans to do so.

The states that already have restrictions that are unaffected by the ruling, according to the grocery tracking website Greenchoice, are Florida, Idaho, Indiana, Louisiana, Oklahoma, Texas, and Utah.

South Carolina and North Dakota were only days away from implementing similar bans beginning Sept. 1 when Judge Amy Berman Jackson, an Obama appointee on the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, struck down restrictions that had already been in place in Colorado, Iowa, Nebraska, Tennessee, and West Virginia.

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Rep. Nancy Mace Goes Nuclear — Says Every Muslim in Public Office Is a “Trojan Horse” and Threat to the Republic: ‘I Don’t Want to be Blown Up by a Suicide Bomber’

South Carolina Congresswoman Nancy Mace is refusing to play the politically correct game.

In a blistering series of posts this weekend, the outspoken Republican declared that every single Muslim holding public office in America is a Trojan horse and a direct threat to national security and the republic itself.

Mace wrote: “Every single Muslim holding public office in America is a trojan horse, and a threat to both national security and our republic. We refuse to be silent.”

Enter radical leftist Rep. Pramila Jayapal, who immediately raced to the defense of the very ideology that has produced endless bloodshed on American soil. Jayapal screeched: “This is absolutely disgusting and dangerous. Republicans must denounce this blatant Islamophobia. To Muslim communities across America: I will always stand with you.”

Mace wasn’t having it. She hit back with a video of an Imam in Alabama, openly calling for Muslims to sacrifice their lives through jihad in order to establish “the religion of Allah” right here in the United States.

Mace posted: “Watch this Imam, in Alabama of all places, say ‘…Muslims must be ready to sacrifice their lives through jihad in order to establish ‘the religion of Allah’ in the United States…’ Islam must be confronted and Islam must be removed from civil society in the US.”

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S.C. military base renamed after late Senator Lindsey Graham

Joint Base Charleston in South Carolina has officially been renamed Joint Base Lindsey Graham.

On Monday, a ceremony took place at the 24,000 acre base in honor of the late senator.       

His sister, Senator Darline Graham (R-S.C.), War Secretary Pete Hegseth, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Governor Henry McMaster (R-S.C.) unveiled the new base sign. 

Graham highlighted her brother’s over 33 years of service in the Air Force and in the Senate, saying he loved his state and country.   

“What an honor for my brother,” she said. “And what a tribute to his 33 years of service. Lindsey loved the Air Force. He loved its mission. He loved wearing the uniform of his country. His interest in foreign affairs and national security started with his service in the Air Force.”

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Democrats Vote to Make South Carolina the First 2028 Primary State – And Here’s Who Will Benefit

Democrats are set to make South Carolina its first 2028 primary state.

The Democrat National Committee panel on Friday voted to make South Carolina – a state with a large black voting bloc, their first presidential primary state.

“So they will emerge as the first contest in a body of work that will have a plethora of good contests for these candidates to really vie for,” the panel said.

This is a major shift away from Iowa and Nevada – states with fewer black voters.

Recall that Joe Biden pushed for the Democrats to move its first voting state to South Carolina because that is where he made his ‘come back’ in 2020.

Joe Biden requested the change going into the 2024 election after he took a punch to the gut in Iowa and came in 5th place in the New Hampshire 2020 primaries.

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South Carolina Gov. Appoints Darline Graham Nordone to Finish Lindsey Graham’s Term

Gov. Henry McMaster (R-SC) picked Sen. Lindsey Graham’s (R-SC) sister, Darline Graham Nordone, to serve as interim senator, and complete the remainder of her brother’s term.

During a press conference on Monday, McMaster expressed that it was his duty and “honor to name someone to serve in the place” of Graham, whose term runs through the end of the 119th Congress on January 3, 2027. McMaster’s selection of Graham Nordone to take her brother’s seat in the Senate comes after Graham’s office announced on Sunday that he had died at the age of 71 after “a brief and sudden illness.”

“Today, under the law, it’s my duty to and honor to name someone to serve in the place of this irresistible man, this irreplaceable man, this extraordinary man for the remainder of his term,” McMaster said. “Lindsey took care of his little sister in years long departed. It’s my honor to ask his little sister, Darline Graham to finish his work for him now.”

McMaster continued to talk about how prior to having a phone conservation with Graham Nordone regarding her serving out the remainder of her brother’s term, he “had wondered” what she would say and was humbled by her “quickness to see the duty” for her to serve.

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Penis Measurements Cannot Justify a Sex Offender’s Indefinite Detention, South Carolina’s Top Court Says

South Carolina is one of 20 states that authorize indefinite civil commitment of sex offenders after they have completed their prison sentences. Under state law, such continued detention is allowed only when a jury concludes beyond a reasonable doubt that a respondent qualifies as a “sexually violent predator” (SVP), meaning he “suffers from a mental abnormality or personality disorder that makes [him] likely to engage in acts of sexual violence if not confined in a secure facility for long-term control, care, and treatment.”

Although the South Carolina Office of Mental Health (OMH) concluded that Andy Hyman was not an SVP, a jury disagreed, swayed by a second opinion based largely on penile plethysmography (PPG), a scientifically dubious technique that aims to measure sexual response to images, audio narratives, or textual descriptions by gauging tiny changes in the circumference of the subject’s penis. That test, the South Carolina Supreme Court unanimously ruled last month in response to Hyman’s appeal, is “generally inadmissible in judicial proceedings” because it suffers from a “glaring lack of standardization,” which casts doubt on its validity as a predictor of recidivism.

With that decision, the South Carolina Supreme Court joins a long list of state and federal courts that have deemed PPG results unreliable and inadmissible. The technique is so controversial that the OMH, which is charged with conducting pre-commitment evaluations under South Carolina’s SVP law, eschews PPG as a matter of policy. But the state is allowed to solicit a second evaluation if it does not like the OMH’s opinion, which is what happened in Hyman’s case.

Hyman, who pleaded guilty to criminal sexual conduct with a minor in 1997, served “a short term in prison” and “completed several years of supervised release in 2003,” the South Carolina Supreme Court noted. Thirteen years later, Hyman pleaded guilty to the same crime, this time in the third degree, which resulted in a 10-year prison sentence. Before he completed that sentence, the state sought to continue detaining him as an SVP.

Marie Gehle, the OMH’s chief psychologist, conducted “a series of standardized tests” and diagnosed Hyman with “pedophilic disorder.” But she concluded that he did not fit the statutory criteria for civil commitment because he was not especially likely to reoffend. Unsatisfied with that assessment, the state asked Emily Gottfried, director of the Sexual Behavior Clinic and Lab at the Medical University of South Carolina (MUSC), for a second opinion.

Gottfried agreed that standardized tests placed Hyman “squarely within the average rate of recidivism” for sex offenders. But unlike Gehle, she also conducted a PPG test, which seemed to play an important role in her conclusion that Hyman posed “a heightened risk of reoffending.”

During the trial, Gottfried described PPG as “an objective physiological measure of male sexual arousal,” “the gold standard” for assessing that response, and a “strong predictor or risk factor for future sexual offending.” The PPG results, the state’s lawyer told the jury, “clearly indicate[d]” that Hyman had a “current sexual interest in children.” That was enough, “in and of itself,” to justify his civil commitment, the state argued.

The jury deliberated for just 22 minutes before agreeing with Gottfried. It rejected the contrary assessment offered by Gehle, who testified that most of the tests Gottfried had used were not designed to measure the likelihood of recidivism. In particular, Gehle said, PPG is not reliable, since retests produce inconsistent results, or valid as a predictor of future offending, which she said is why the OMH does not use it for pre-commitment evaluations.

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South Carolina Passes “GRADE FLOOR” Ban For K-12 Public Schools

In a move to protect educational excellence, consistency and standards, the State of Carolina has become the first state in the U.S. to ban “grade floor” policies in K-12 public schools.

For those who are not familiar with the “grade floor” policy, it is a practice that prevents teachers from giving a student a grade below the actual percentage the student earned.

The most common “floor” school systems adopt is the 50% minimum. Basically, a student need not do any work to earn at least a 50%. It’s part of what is called “equity grading” which should be correctly called “enabling grading” because it enables students to appoint themselves as “victims” in order to skate by without achieving educational proficiency in school. It teaches students that they can’t and don’t have to achieve, especially when they face difficult content or situations. We have published several articles on this crippling policy:

Currently, we can confirm only six districts in Maryland that have used or do use the 50% floor in grading, Anne Arundel, Calvert, Charles, Montgomery, Prince Georges and Talbot. Talbot recently removed it from their policies.

Currently, it is estimated that 18 out of South Carolina’s 22 School Districts use the 50% floor in student grading even though research concludes that the practice does not improve student achievement.

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RINO TREACHERY STRIKES AGAIN IN SOUTH CAROLINA: Senate KILLS Motion to Expedite Trump-Backed Redistricting – 6 Republicans Join Democrats to Jeopardize 7-0 GOP Congressional Map and Protect Jim Clyburn’s Gerrymandered Seat

The South Carolina Senate just killed a critical motion to expedite the Trump-backed congressional redistricting effort, putting the entire push for a bold 7-0 Republican map in serious jeopardy as Democrats and their weak-kneed GOP enablers drag their feet past the start of early voting on Tuesday, May 26.

State Rep. Adam Morgan blasted the vote and sounded the alarm:

“South Carolina Senate KILLS motion to expedite Redistricting! This puts the entire effort in serious jeopardy. 6 Republicans voted with Dems to kill it… The motion would [have] suspended Rule 15b to allow immediate cloture. Without this they can drag the debate out past the start of early voting (Tues, 5/26). This 25-15 vote failed to meet the required 2/3 threshold. Luke Rankin (R-Horry) did not vote.”

The six Republican traitors who voted with the Democrats to block the motion and protect the status quo are:

  • Rex Rice (Pickens)
  • Shane Massey (Edgefield)
  • Sean Bennett (Dorchester)
  • Chip Campsen (Charleston)
  • Tom Davis (Beaufort)
  • Greg Hembree (Horry)

This is the same crew of weaklings (plus one new addition) who previously blocked efforts to extend the session, as The Gateway Pundit reported earlier this month when five of them handed Democrats a temporary win and defied massive pressure from President Donald Trump himself.

As The Gateway Pundit previously reported, the South Carolina House just rammed through a bold new 7-0 Republican congressional map – a direct strike at far-left Rep. Jim Clyburn’s unconstitutional, race-based 6th District stronghold. Governor Henry McMaster even called an emergency special session to force the issue and secure a clean Republican sweep of all seven U.S. House seats in the Palmetto State.

But these Senate RINOs just can’t help themselves. They’d rather side with Democrats, protect entrenched power, and risk losing ground for conservatives across the country than deliver the fair maps South Carolinians deserve ahead of the 2026 midterms.

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South Carolina’s New Social Media Law Puts Every User Under Age Surveillance

South Carolina Governor Henry McMaster signed H.B. 4591 on May 19, turning the Stop Harm from Addictive Social Media Act into a law that will reshape how every resident of the state uses major social media platforms.

The bill passed with almost no opposition, clearing the House 115-0 and the Senate 42-1. It takes effect January 1, 2027, and it brings with it a surveillance apparatus aimed at all users.

We obtained a copy of the bill for you here.

The law, sponsored by Rep. Brandon Guffey (R-York), requires covered platforms to repeatedly estimate and verify the age of every South Carolina account holder.

The stated goal is child protection. The way it claims to do that is continuous behavioral analysis of anyone who spends enough time on a platform, combined with escalating confidence thresholds and penalties of ten thousand dollars per violation if platforms get it wrong.

Here’s how the age estimation system works. Once an account holder hits 25 cumulative hours on a platform within six months (the “first trigger date”), the platform has 14 days to estimate whether that person is over 15, with 80% confidence.

At 50 hours (the “second trigger date”), the confidence requirement jumps to 90%. After that, the platform must update its estimate every 100 hours of use, or whenever it runs data analytics on the user for any other reason, whichever comes sooner.

That last clause is easy to miss and it means any time a platform runs its profiling algorithms on you for ad targeting, content recommendations, or anything else, it also has to re-evaluate your estimated age. The law essentially piggybacks mandatory age surveillance onto whatever commercial surveillance platforms already conduct, expanding the scope of both.

Because platforms face significant liability if they can’t meet these confidence thresholds, the law creates powerful incentives to harvest far more sensitive data about users than they do today, including about minors.

A platform that guesses wrong faces $10,000 per violation. A platform that overinvests in behavioral profiling to avoid those fines faces no penalty at all. The incentive structure points in one direction.

The bill claims it “does not create any duty on the part of a covered social media platform to request, collect, or retain any information from or about any account holder” and that age estimates must be “derived based on information collected and retained by the covered social media platform in the ordinary course of operation.”

This is the bill’s central fiction. Platforms that can’t achieve 80% or 90% confidence from existing data will need to collect more data, or face financial ruin from accumulated violations. The law doesn’t mandate new data collection in the same way that holding a knife to your wallet doesn’t mandate you hand over cash.

For users classified as children (under 16), the restrictions are extensive. Accounts require verifiable parental consent, with privacy settings locked to the most restrictive levels by default.

Platforms cannot show children profile-based feeds, profile-based advertising, or any “addictive interface features,” a category that includes infinite scrolling, auto-play video, push notifications, and display of personal metrics like reaction counts.

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Major Victory For South Carolina Republicans As Redistricting Map Clears House

The South Carolina House of Representatives approved a new congressional map early Wednesday, sending the redistricting bill to the state Senate after Democrats attempted to slow the process with hundreds of amendments, as reported by Townhall.

The new map, approved under House Bill 5683, passed the lower chamber with a final vote of 74-36, according to posts from redistricting trackers and South Carolina Republican officials.

The map would create a 7-0 Republican congressional delegation by drawing out Rep. Jim Clyburn, D-S.C., from his current district.

The redistricting push is part of a special session called by South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster. McMaster had previously been noncommittal on the effort before getting behind the process.

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