10 most significant stories of 2022: Steve Deace

10. Canadian Trucker Convoy

Truckers from across Canada protested vaccine mandates and other COVID-19 restrictions with a “Freedom Convoy” that began in British Columbia and made its way to the nation’s capital with tens of thousands of supporters.

9. Selling Out

The House of Representatives on Friday passed the “Assault Weapons Ban of 2022,” a bill that would ban various semi-automatic guns, though the measure would grandfather in firearms that people already own.

“It shall be unlawful for a person to import, sell, manufacture, transfer, or possess, in or affecting interstate or foreign commerce, a semiautomatic assault weapon,” the text of the bill states. “Paragraph (1) shall not apply to the possession, sale, or transfer of any semiautomatic assault weapon otherwise lawfully possessed under Federal law on the date of enactment of the Assault Weapons Ban of 2022.”

Republican Reps. Chris Jacobs of New York and Brian Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania joined most Democrats in voting for the bill, but Democratic Reps. Kurt Schrader of Oregon, Henry Cuellar of Texas, Jared Golden of Maine, Ron Kind of Wisconsin, and Vicente Gonzalez of Texas voted against the bill. Read more.

8. Ukraine

The U.S. has sent nearly $20 billion in first-world weaponry to Ukraine since its invasion by Russia. House Republicans, poised to take control of Congress in January, are now pressuring the Biden administration for greater accountability and transparency about these weapons transfers as well about other aid packages sent to the embattled Slavic nation.

The push for greater oversight comes after it was revealed that there have only been two in-person weapons inspections conducted by U.S. monitors since February.Read more.

7. Inflation

Tiffany Wilding, an economist who works for investment management giant PIMCO, explained on CNBC’s “Squawk Box” that the report is deceiving because certain measurements skew the data.

“There is a little bit of noise that you have to take into account because inventories and trade numbers can obviously be very volatile. If you dig into the details of the quarter three GDP numbers, what you find is when you exclude those more volatile categories, growth was pretty subpar,” she said.

“For the year as a whole — excluding those categories, we call that ‘final domestic demand’ — growth is sub-1%,” she explained, noting that 2021 saw “robust” growth of 5%. Read more.

6. Groomers

U.S. Rep. Carolyn B. Maloney of New York, a Democrat who lists the gender pronouns “She/Her” in her Twitter biography, is publicly praising Drag Queen Story Hour, a program that features cross-dressers reading books to children.

“Across the country, books are being banned, which are depriving our nation’s youth. But thanks to @NYPL and programs like Draq Queen story hour, NYC’s next generation are getting a well rounded education about LGBTQ+ issues and gender identity,” Maloney tweeted on Monday. Read more.

5. Ron DeSantis

Florida law requires that elected officials tender an irrevocable resignation if they seek another office the term of which would overlap with the term of their current office.

“No person may qualify as a candidate for more than one public office, whether federal, state, district, county, or municipal, if the terms or any part thereof run concurrently with each other,” the law explains. “No officer may qualify as a candidate for another state, district, county, or municipal public office if the terms or any part thereof run concurrently with each other without resigning from the office he or she presently holds.” Read more.

4. Elon Musk Buys Twitter

Billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk reportedly fired four top executives from the leadership of Twitter on Thursday after completing a deal to buy the company.

Musk reportedly fired Twitter chief executive officer Parag Agrawal, chief financial officer Ned Segal, top legal and policy executive Vijaya Gadde, and general counsel Sean Edgett, according to a report from the New York Times that cited confidential sources.

The report said at least one executive was escorted out of the offices after he was fired.

Earlier on Thursday, Musk outlined why he was buying the popular platform. Read more.

3. Depopulation

One may have thought that Bill Nye’s new Netflix show had reached its lowest point with a crude and anti-science song about genitals and gender theory, but beyond the nonsense, the former children’s show star is also floating the theory that bringing children into this world ought to come with government-imposed penalties because of climate change.

On the season finale of “Bill Nye Saves the World,” entitled “Earth’s People Problem,” the former children’s show star turned panderer to millennial nostalgia and hype theory discusses overpopulation, asking a panel whether or not “we should have policies that penalize people for having extra kids in the developed world?” Read more.

2. The Red Wave That Wasn’t

Imagine how amazing things could have been had we woken up last Wednesday morning with Republicans winning 54 seats in the Senate and 250 seats in the House. We’d be off to the promised land, right? Wrong! Actually, from a policy perspective, we’d be in the same place we are today, sans the much-needed introspection that is taking place deep in the souls of conservative politicos — an introspection we’ve needed for decades. It’s not about Trump per se, and not even so much about McConnell and McCarthy. It’s that we are the true RINOs — Republicans in name only — in a party that has never shared our values for most of its history. Read More.

1. Roe Overturned

The Supreme Court of the United States officially overturned Roe v. Wade, and the debate over abortion rights has been given back to the states. On this historic day, BlazeTV hosts celebrate the Supreme Court’s incredible decision and take a look at some of the insane reactions as the left comes completely undone.Read more.