"San Francisco residents recalled three members of the city's school board Tuesday for what critics called misplaced priorities and putting progressive politics over the needs of children during the pandemic.

"Voters overwhelmingly approved the recall in a special election, according to tallies by the San Francisco Department of Elections. ...

"Parents in the politically liberal city launched the recall effort in January 2021 out of frustration over the slow reopening of district schools, while the board pursued the renaming of 44 school sites and the elimination of competitive admissions at the elite Lowell High School. ...

"Many Asian parents were already angered by the board's efforts to end merit-based admissions at the elite Lowell High School, where Asian students are the majority."

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"Russia said Tuesday that some units participating in military exercises would begin returning to their bases, adding to glimmers of hope that the Kremlin may not be planning to invade Ukraine imminently, though it gave no details on the pullback.

"The announcement came a day after Russua's foreign minister indicated the country was ready to keep talking about the security grievances that led to the Ukraine crisis -- changing the tenor after weeks of rising tensions. Still, Western officials continued to warn that an invasion could come at any moment and said some forces and military hardware were moving toward the border, muddying the picture.

"It wasn't immediately clear where exactly the troops that the Russian Defense Ministry said were pulling back were deployed or how many were leaving, making it hard to understand the significance. The announcement pushed world markets and the ruble up, but Ukarine's leaders expressed skepticism.

"'Russia constantly makes various statements,' Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said. 'That's why we have the rule: We won't believe when we hear, we'll believe when we see. When we see troops pulling out, we'll believe in de-escalation.'"

"So there you have it.

Russiagate, the collective delusion that Donald Trump was secretly a Russian agent aided and abetted by the Kremlin, the topic of uncountable inches of Washington Post and New York Times copy and the entire primetime lineup of MSNBC, was a dirty trick by the Hillary Clinton campaign. Not just part of it. All of it. One of the most diabolical, successful misinformation campaigns ever concocted. ...

"Now another piece of Russia, Russia, Russia is kaputski. A computer server operated by Trump's company was secretly communicating with a Russian firm, claimed Slate magazine and endless Twitter threads of would-be tech experts.

"But as special counsel John Durham outlines in his latest indictment, that was just a story made up by tech executive Rodney Joffe, who desperately wanted a job with the Clinton administration. He hacked Trump's servers, cherry-picked privileged Internet data he had access to, and molded it to look like something nefarious.

"He was coached by lawyer Michael Sussmann -- who was being paid by the Clinton administration, although he lied about that to investigators. Sussmann goes to the FBI as a 'concerned citizen' -- not a 'Clinton stooge' -- o try to get them to bite. The ultimate goal: Be able to leak to the Times that Trump is under official investigation."

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"The Biden administration and Democrats have waged war on the American oil and gas industry, all while Russia expands its oil and gas footprint around the world. Off the bat, President Biden canceled the Keystone XL Pipeline, stopped leasing on federal lands, and unleashed regulations that have destroyed at least 10,000 good-paying oil and gas jobs. ...

"Last year, Democrats on the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform began to complement the Biden administration's agenda during a hearing with four major energy companies represented, ExxonMobil, BP, Chevron and Shell Oil. Those in the majority berated the executives from these companies with accusations of lying regarding their actions on combating climate change.

"Despite these companies being industry leaders when it comes to technology and innovation to reduce carbon emissions, Democrats have attempted to depose these executives to further their agenda. This has been done by issuing countless legal document requests and holding hearings meant for partisan show, rather than gain.

"We need to focus on issues that impact Americans directly, like the rising cost of gas. Oh, it has real impact -- gas prices have risen 40% at the pump. So much for helping the working class, Biden. ...

"The American people are suffering from the costs of inflation, of rising gas prices, and of the threat of Russia's expanding footprint all over Europe as it uses its own natural gas leverage. It is time for Congress to turn its attention to solving these problems, and leave the partisan investigations meant for political theater behind."

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"Sick of sticker shock at the supermarket? Don't expect relief any time soon.

"That's the word from mighty Goldman Sachs, which says in a report to clients that grocery prices will rise by as much as 6% this year -- on top of a similar increase last year.

"'The stage has been set for further substantial increases in retail food prices this year,' the investment bank's economists wrote in the report.

"They blamed COVID-related supply issues, as well as high labor costs and rising expenses for fertilizer and other farming necessities.

"Goldman's forecast is the latest gut punch for U.S. consumers grappling with rising costs for practically everything, from rent to food."

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"The debate over speech in this country is defined by people using their childishness and sense of entitlement as weapons. It won't change until leaders are unafraid to tell them in no uncertain terms to grow up."

"President Joe Biden is seeking to raise federal employee pay by 4.6%, with private sector pay estimated to rise just 3.4% this year.

"The pay raise for federal employees is reportedly part of Biden's forthcoming FY2023 budget, which the White House plans to send to Congress after the president's State of the Union address on March 1.

"The White House requested a 2.7% increase for federal employees in FY2021. Pay raises for the federal workforce in FY2022 range from 2.42% to 3.21%. Federal News Radio reported that the 4.6% request for the federal workforce in the FY2023 budget is the 'largest in decades.'"

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"Gerrymandering is to politics what doping is to sports. It is universally viewed as a cheat, an effort to manipulate districts to guarantee electoral victories. Drafting coherent districts evenly and logically to divide populations is not particularly difficult. School districts usually are designed to evenly distribute populations with schools as center points; those school districts often serve as voting locations. Once you depart from such logical divisions, however, political pressures produce a grotesque progeny of malformed districts. ...

"Both parties have engaged in gerrymandering this year -- but the blinkered outrage of President Biden to Republican gerrymandering only highlights the hypocrisy of our times. We are left, yet again, with a gang of arsonists espousing fire safety in our political system. Despite voters calling for an end to gerrymandering, their leaders continue to lie to them and frustrate efforts to end this insidious practice.

"While the National Democratic Redistricting Committee called for a 'Fair Districts Pledge' to 'commit to restoring fairness to our democracy,' these politicians have instead followed Oscar Wilde's rule that 'the only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it.'"

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"Union membership in Wisconsin is about half of what it was a little over a decade ago.

"The latest numbers from the Department of Labor show a steep drop in union membership in Wisconsin since 2009.

"In 2009, nearly 385,000 people were union members in the state. That was about 15% of the workforce.

BLS said, as of 2021, that number fell to 215,000 union members, or 7.9% of the state's workforce.

"Wisconsin saw two steep drops in union membership, the first after former Gov. Scott Walker signed Act 10 into law in 211, and the second after Gov. Walker signed the state's Right to Work law in 2015.

"'To lose 12,000 members in one year and over 170,000 members since 2009 proves that Big Labor needs forced coercion to survive and shows us why it was so important for former Governor Walker and the Republican Legislation to pass worker freedom. Wisconsinites are voting with their feet and they are walking away from the labor movement,' Brett Healy with the MacIver Institute told The Center Square. ...

"The drop in Wisconsin's union membership mirrors a drop in national union membership as well."

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"The average price for regular gasoline continues to rise and is only three cents away from a new seven-year-high.

"According to AAA, the average price for regular gasoline now stands at $3.39, which is only 3 cents per gallon from a new seven-year high that was reached in 2014 when gas hit $3.42. ...

"New analysis published Wednesday by the Joint Economic Committee Republicans suggests the Biden administration is exacerbating soaring energy prices by cracking down on the oil and gas industry with new regulations that limit production and discourage investments in traditional energy infrastructure.

"The JEC study, shared exclusively with FOX Business, shows how President Biden's policies have stoked higher energy prices by 'imposing new barriers to accessing American oil and gas reserves, and by discouraging investment in these historically reliable and inexpensive sources of energy.' Rep. Mike Lee, R-Utah, is the ranking member of the Joint Economic Committee."

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