Contributing Writers

The Texas Legislature has passed a bill requiring silent panic buttons in classrooms across the state, which comes just days after the anniversary of last year’s shooting in Uvalde, where a gunman killed 19 children and two teachers at Robb Elementary School. House Bill 3 cleared the chamber with a vote of 119-25. It now heads to the Senate. A mass shooting took place in Uvalde, Texas on May 24, 2022.

State lawmakers in Texas advanced a bill Tuesday suggesting stipends of up to $25,000 for public school staff members who become designated guardians authorized to carry or possess a weapon while working on the premises. House Bill 13, which focuses on “training, preparedness, and funding for school safety and emergencies,” passed with bipartisan support and now heads to the state Senate where it’s fate is uncertain.

A gun store manager said a sweeping new gun control package signed into law Tuesday by Washington’s governor demonstrates the power of a one-party state to chip away at Americans’ constitutional rights.  “They have an agenda and that agenda is to get rid of guns,” Bruce Smith, the manager of Surplus Ammo and Arms in Tacoma, told Fox News. “And eventually, all guns.”  WATCH MORE FOX NEWS DIGITAL ORIGINALS HERE Gov.

One of the national co-chairs of President Biden’s newly announced 2024 re-election campaign has deep and longstanding ties to China’s communist government, potentially presenting a problem for the president as analysts continue to warn of the threat that China poses to U.S. national security. The Biden campaign announced Tuesday that former Disney and DreamWorks Animation chief Jeffrey Katzenberg will be one of its national co-chairs.

The 2024 presidential election is a year and a half away. Still, several Republican presidential hopefuls are already making stops in key primary states like Iowa, New Hampshire, and South Carolina.  Florida Governor Ron DeSantis made a stop in South Carolina on Wednesday. He talked about his work in Florida, arguing that much of what he’s done there can work for the U.S. as a whole.

Former President Donald Trump – days after being heavily criticized by a leading anti-abortion group – spotlighted his past and potentially future efforts to restrict abortions, as he addressed an influential crowd of social conservative leaders and activists in Iowa, the state that leads off the GOP presidential nominating calendar.

Former Vice President Mike Pence spoke his mind about the upcoming 2024 presidential elections, saying that “serious” candidates would need “to be in this contest by June,” in an interview with CBS News.  “I think that anyone that would be serious about seeking the Republican nomination would need to be in this contest by June,” he told CBS News’s “Face the Nation” in an interview clip that will air on Sunday, April 23.

The Biden administration is reportedly finalizing a proposal that would force fossil fuel-fired power plants to substantially curb emissions or utilize costly carbon capture technology.

A Montana state representative condemned a transgender legislator’s “hate-filled remarks” to Fox News Digital, accusing the representative of “seeking media attention.” The controversy stems from comments made by State Rep. Zooey Zephyr during a Tuesday debate about a bill that would ban gender-affirming care for minors. Zephyr accused the bill’s supporters of being complicit in the deaths of transgender youths.

The Biden administration is pushing full steam ahead to massively expand offshore wind development across millions of acres of federal waters, actions that critics warn would have dire ecological and economic impacts. Days after taking office, President Biden issued an executive action ordering his administration to expand opportunities for the offshore wind industry as part of his aggressive climate agenda to curb greenhouse gas emissions and stop global warming.

The rise of artificial intelligence is entrenching more economic and political power in the hands of Big Tech companies, according to researchers at New York University (NYU) who argue AI must undergo more scrutiny and regulation. AI Now, a research institute at NYU, released a new report detailing how major tech companies wield significant control over AI, arguing such influence must be addressed now before the situation gets too out of hand.

Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg dropped an appeal he filed after a federal judge ruled that an ex-prosecutor in his office can be subpoenaed by House Judiciary Committee Chairman Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio). Bragg dropped the appeal Friday, after the parties came to an agreement on a testimony from former prosecutor Mark Pomerantz to the House Judiciary Committee. The agreement stipulates that a lawyer from Bragg’s office will be present at the testimony who can make objections.

The acting head of the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) announced he will resign from the agency this summer.  Acting administrator Billy Nolen made the announcement on Friday after a year of service in his current position. He previously worked for the FAA as an associate administrator in January 2022. Nolen’s farewell letter is a blow to the FAA, which has not had a Senate-appointed administrator since April 2022.

The Maine Department of Environmental Protection is taking Canadian Pacific Kansas City to task over the cleanup following a freight train derailment and fire. Commissioner Melanie Loyzim sent a letter Thursday telling the railroad that its good faith efforts have failed to meet the agency’s expectations with regard to response and timing “to effectively mitigate impacts to the environment and public health.

North Dakota House lawmakers passed three bills Friday that would restrict transgender people’s access to bathrooms, remove sexually explicit materials from the children’s section of libraries, and expand child care assistance in the hopes of combating the state’s workforce shortage. The trans bill and sexual materials bill passed the House and Senate with veto-proof majorities, so the bills could become law without Republican Gov. Doug Burgum’s approval.

The U.S. military is embracing artificial intelligence as a tool for quickly digesting data and helping leaders make the right decision – and not to make those decisions for the humans in charge, according to two top AI advisors in U.S. Central Command. CENTCOM, which is tasked with safeguarding U.S. national security in the Middle East and Southeast Asia, just hired Dr. Andrew Moore as its first AI advisor.

Two U.S. Representatives from the state of Florida, Reps. Gus Bilirakis and Michael Waltz, have endorsed former President Donald Trump over their own state’s governor to be the next President of the United States. On Thursday, Rep. Bilirakis, R-Fla., released a statement calling Trump “the right leader” to best reverse the “disastrous policies of the Biden administration.

The Republican Party will hold its second presidential primary debate at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley, California, according to Republican National Committee Chair Ronna McDaniel. “I firmly believe that our next president will be on that stage,” McDaniel said Thursday, after announcing the library would host the debate.

Connecticut has paused granting prison commutations in the wake of an uproar over a drastic rise in the number of inmates having their sentences reduced, the governor announced Thursday. Conservative lawmakers and victims’ rights advocates had called for the suspension of commutations and a review of the state’s Board of Pardons and Paroles policies after it was revealed that 71 commutations were granted in 2022. Just three were approved between 2017 and 2021.

A former CIA official testified that then-Biden campaign senior advisor, now-Secretary of State Antony Blinken “played a role in the inception” of the public statement signed by current and past intelligence officials that claimed the Hunter Biden laptop was part of a Russian disinformation campaign.

Halting the development of artificial intelligence in America would only give more power to China to develop its own AI technology that favors its communist political system and increase the chances that China’s AI system becomes the global standard, technology experts warned senators this week.

States across the country are taking the lead in keeping biological males out of girls’ sports with a flurry of recent legislation while President Biden’s White House at the federal level slams such measures as “discrimination” against transgender students.