Tag: US Features

Mother of New York Dancer Sentenced to Prison in China for Her Faith

NEW YORK—For the past 15 years, a cell phone was the only thing that held together Steven Wang and his family, who are an ocean away in China. It was over a phone call that Wang found out about his father’s death in 2009—of kidney failure resulting from years of torture detained in a Chinese…


Mother of Shen Yun Dancer Sentenced to 4 Years in Prison in China for Her Faith

NEW YORK—For the past 15 years, a cell phone was the only thing that held together Steven Wang and his family, who are an ocean away in China. It was over a phone call that Wang found out about his father’s death in 2009—of kidney failure resulting from years of torture detained in a Chinese…


Victims Break Silence After Family Courts Forced Children to Live With Abusers

A 15-year-old girl and an 11-year-old boy refused to leave their grandmother’s Santa Cruz, California, home in October 2022 when transport agents from a private company arrived to enforce a “reunification therapy” court order by a local family court judge. At the beginning of a video of the incident, the agents appear to reason with the…


Biden Vetoes Joint Resolution Against His Water Rule

President Joe Biden has vetoed a joint resolution from the House and Senate that would have repealed his Waters of the United States (WOTUS) rule, delivering what could be a fatal blow to that specific challenge to his environmental agenda. The expected veto was issued on the afternoon of April 6. “I just vetoed a…


New Bronx High School Focused on Excellence, Responsibility

“The message to the kids in our school is that they are the architects of their own lives,” says Ian Rowe, co-founder of Vertex Partnership Academies. In a recent episode of “American Thought Leaders,” host Jan Jekielek visited Vertex Partnership Academies, a new network of character-focused, International Baccalaureate high schools located in the Bronx. He spoke…


Homeless Phoenix Residents Await City’s Action Displacing Them From ‘The Zone’

PHOENIX, Ariz.—Shelby Ord of Phoenix, Arizona, has big plans for himself at 18. First, he plans to get his high-school equivalency diploma, a good job, an apartment, and “maybe a cat, of course.” Then go to college and major in chemistry or teaching. All attainable and worthwhile goals were seemingly out of reach on April…


‘The Only Crime That I’ve Committed is to Fiercely Defend Our Nation,’ Trump Says After Arraignment

PALM BEACH, Fla.—Former President Donald Trump warned that the United States had sunk to the level of the “old Soviet Union” during a speech given from the ballroom of his Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach on April 4, hours after pleading not guilty to felony charges brought New York prosecutors. “I never thought anything like…


50 Years After Last US Soldier Left Vietnam, Veterans Still Dying From Agent Orange

CAMP VERDE, Ariz.—When they were young men nearly 60 years ago, Dennis Blessman, David Lucas, and Jerry “Doc” Spulecki survived the war in Vietnam, only to fight another battle at home against a silent killer, Agent Orange, decades later. The men now suffer from similar “presumptive” conditions of service-related exposure to the highly toxic herbicide—ischemic…


On COVID, Trump and DeSantis Converged and Diverged

In recent weeks, both former President Donald Trump and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis have touted their own handling of the COVID pandemic while criticizing each other’s response to the crisis. It’s only natural in the slow run-up to 2024. Everyone wants to be able to say they got COVID right—and hindsight is always 20/20. On…


At 91, Former Ukrainian Living in US Sees Ominous Similarities Between WWII and Russian Invasion of His Birthplace

PHOENIX, Ariz.—On July 5, George Ilinsky of Phoenix, Arizona, turns 92—fate willing. And with that milestone birthday comes the sad realization that most people he’s known and loved are gone. Few people live to be Ilinsky’s age with their minds as sharp and with names, dates, places, joys, and heartaches still intact. They’re all etched…