Dairy Queen is bringing a beloved dessert back to their menus for a limited time. Fans are ecstatic about this delicious sweet treat making another appearance. This Dairy Queen cotton candy-inspired dipped cone flavor was first introduced in 2020 and is now making a comeback in certain locations. Dairy Queen Dipped Cone Fan Favorite Flavor Various locations across the Midwest and the East Coast have fans jumping for joy as they roll out a limited-edition Dairy Queen Dipping Cone. Parade shares that this dip was inspired by cotton candy. It was a huge hit but disappeared from menus back in 2021. However, it is coming back now, but with a slight twist. Instead of the light blue dip, this dip is now a light pink color, and it has many delicious purposes. Fans have been using this “flavored magic sauce as a cone dip, a sundae topping, and even as the layers of their ice cream parfait.” @dbndairyqueen COTTON CANDY PARFAIT#fyp #happycustomer #greenscreenvideo #fyシ゚viral #dairyqueen #dearbornmi ♬ ultimate vibes – morgan hardy Dairy Queen has been sharing various TikToks on the best ways to use this dipping cone, and the results look delicious. Fans React To The Cotton Candy Fans cannot wait to get their hands on this sweet, delicious goodness. Excited consumers flew to the comment section of the post. One user wrote, “OMW TO DAIRY QUEEN TO GET THE COTTON CANDY BLIZZARD” Another added, ” I need cotton candy year round!” A third chimed in that this flavor has always been a favorite of theirs. In addition to the TikTok video, Dairy Queen also shares various other ways to use this dip. Including a banana split, a cotton candy shake, and a cotton candy cupfection. They released the initial TikTok on March 31, so be sure to check a Dairy Queen near you to see if they have this delicious treat available. The source of the featured image is here. The post Dairy Queen Reinvents A Favorite Dessert For A Limited Time appeared first on InspireMore.

'Everybody knew who had won the election'

'Fight fire with fire'

'Parents shouldn’t have to take a back seat'

The men and women who’ve defended our nation should not have the veterans benefits they earned threatened by fiscal mismanagement. That’s why Republican lawmakers introduced a supplemental appropriations bill to provide an additional $2.9 billion to cover shortfalls in the Department of Veterans Affairs’ budget for fiscal year 2024.    However, this supplemental spending bill shouldn’t have been necessary and lawmakers need to act now to prevent cuts to military veterans’ services in fiscal year 2025. Fortunately, there’s some low-hanging fruit they can, and should, grab. But first, a little context behind these surprise shortfalls. In March, the Biden-Harris administration’s Department of Veterans Affairs submitted its budget request for fiscal 2025, which begins Oct. 1. Just four months later, in July, chief financial officers from the VA informed lawmakers that their fiscal 2025 budget was already on track to come up short by $12 billion and that the agency was about $3 billion short of meeting expenses for fiscal 2024. The VA’s unexpected announcement of record shortfalls prompted stern rebukes from lawmakers. Rep. Mike Bost, R-Ill., chairman of the House Committee on Veterans’ Affairs, called out the VA for “horrendous, top-to-bottom mismanagement.” In a letter to VA Secretary Denis McDonough, Bost wrote: Not only have your chief financial officers thrown out the dollar amounts requested for many key accounts, they have abandoned many of the estimates and projections that underpinned their budget. This is not just fiscal mismanagement; it is strategic whiplash. Bost questioned how the VA could have defended its proposed 10,000 reduction in workforce months earlier, when it declared that the agency “has the nationwide staffing level to accomplish the important objective” of providing veterans’ care but then proceeded to hire 22,000 new employees. Bost also asked why the VA didn’t include in its budget the financial impact of its own rulemaking actions regarding a law called the PACT Act. Congress passed the PACT Act in 2022 to expand and improve benefits for veterans (and their families) who were exposed to toxic substances. The VA’s implementation of the PACT Act has come under bipartisan scrutiny after the department’s inspector general found that the VA improperly awarded $10.8 million in PACT Act funds to senior executives in the VA’s central office.    Eight Republican senators homed in on the VA’s implementation of the PACT Act in a similarly critical letter to McDonough. The senators argued that the VA failed to follow Congress’ intent and “completely ignore[ed] statutory requirements” by immediately processing benefits that were supposed to be phased in over eight years. The VA’s website actually boasts of this violation, proclaiming: “And starting March 5, 2024, we’re expanding VA health care to millions of veterans—years earlier than called for by the PACT Act.” The senators chastised VA management, telling McDonough: “Your active disregard for the law directly impacts veterans and threatens to put their promised benefits … at risk.”    At a time when veteran suicide rates—already 1.6 times that of the general public—continue to climb, veterans can’t afford to have the VA’s resources wasted on reckless mismanagement.   Although fixing current and future budget shortfalls requires sound fiscal planning and adherence to the law, an abundance of inefficiencies and flawed practices create many opportunities to substitute wasteful spending for things that actually benefit veterans. A first step toward ensuring VA funds only go to veterans’ services is to end the practice of “official time,” whereby agency employees receive their full salaries and benefits when working for their union instead of serving veterans. One of the Biden-Harris administration’s first actions in office was to remove the Trump-Pence administration’s limits on official time and to allow VA and other federal employees to spend up to 100% of their time working for their union. The Biden-Harris administration has failed to report the amount of time and resources that VA employees spend on union activities. However, they likely meet or exceed Obama-era levels, which included hundreds of employees spending more than 1 million hours per year working for their union instead of treating veterans.  Proposed legislation called the No Union Time on the Taxpayers Dime Act, sponsored by  Rep. Dan Bishop, R-N.C., and Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, would end the practice of official time. With the Department of Veterans Affairs pointing to rising compensation costs as a source of its budget shortfalls, not paying people VA salaries when they aren’t serving veterans should be a no-brainer. Another logical way to improve veterans’ well-being is by reducing improper payments, which are payments the VA sends to the wrong people or in the wrong amount. In fiscal 2023, the VA issued $3 billion in improper payments. Over the past three years, such improper payments exceeded $10 billion. In long-term services and support, $2 of every $5 spent by the VA in fiscal 2023—$1.4 billion in total—was an improper payment. Virtually none of those improper payments are recouped, and when the VA spends money on services that weren’t actually delivered to veterans, that directly takes away from the agency’s ability to meet veterans’ needs. Reducing improper payments requires greater accountability and responsibility from management. This includes verifying that recipients of VA dollars are who they say they are, and that they’re eligible for the benefits they claim. It also means verifying that services billed to the VA by providers are within the law and that the care actually is delivered to veterans. As the VA’s projected $12 billion shortfall for fiscal 2025 makes clear, Congress needs to act to protect veterans from unwarranted benefit cuts. Easy first steps would be to require that VA funds go to veterans by eliminating the practice of paying government employees to work for their union instead of serving veterans, and to reduce improper payments that subtract from benefits available to veterans.   The post Reckless $15 Billion Budget Shortfalls Risk VA Benefits. These Low-Hanging Fruits Could Prioritize Veterans’ Well-Being. appeared first on The Daily Signal.

To sum up the Biden-Harris administration’s border policies in a phrase, I’d say “America Last.” Over nearly four years, we have seen the results of an unprecedented experiment: What happens when a first world country abandons its legal limits and processes on immigration and allows nearly unlimited, unvetted migration? This is effectively what the Biden-Harris administration has done. Frustrated by a historical bipartisan consensus that it was the president’s duty to enforce immigration law, they decided to replace statute with executive fiat and globalist ideology—under the euphemism of “safe, orderly, humane pathways”—to allow people to enter the United States illegally. The Biden-Harris administration has created programs that induce migrants from all over the world to journey by air and land to our borders, by making it clear that they will almost all be released into the country soon after entry, after (mostly fraudulently) claiming asylum from alleged persecution at home). In addition, they have fabricated unauthorized programs to allow hundreds of thousands more aliens to fly directly into interior U.S. airports with a virtual guarantee of getting immigration “parole” that allows them to stay in quasi-legal status. To manage all this, they pulled so many Border Patrol agents off regular duties to process and release aliens that the number of “gotaways” sneaking in—often those with criminal records to hide—dramatically increased to over 600,000 a year. Those supporting this virtually open border argue that it brings only benefits, like more cheap labor and the ability to show our national charity, as no foreign national facing oppression—or just claiming to—is ever turned away. They deny any link with lower employment or wages for U.S. citizens, with rising crime, or with busted public finances. But the facts show otherwise. Half of Americans in a recent poll from the Center for American Political Studies thought that the illegal immigration surge had increased crime and strained resources. This week and next, I am going to look at five real consequences of the Biden-Harris border policies and their America-Last philosophy. This week, I am going to look at the impact on jobs and public safety. Next week, I’ll look at public housing and public services. Jobs for the Boys—Just Not Ours U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics data showed that in the last year, native-born Americans lost more than 1.3 million jobs while foreign-born workers gained more than 1.2 million jobs. As economist EJ Antoni puts it, “All of the net job growth has gone to foreign-born workers (a category which the Labor Department admits includes illegal aliens), while native-born Americans have lost a net of 300,000 jobs.” As David Rundell writes in Newsweek: Because most illegal migrants have few skills, they compete directly with lower-skilled American workers. It is these less-skilled Americans, including many people of color, who have suffered most from the falling wages illegals generate. These less-well-off workers are also the ones who suffer most when public health, transportation, education, and social services are strained by an influx of illegal migrants who have never paid taxes. Crime—Americans Assume the Risks Every single day, the Department of Homeland Security is paroling or releasing hundreds of foreign nationals from corrupt, high-crime, or even terrorist-harboring countries, letting them into the U.S. with zero background information on them from their home country. Thousands more sneak in as gotaways each week. The legacy media does not just ignore the story of how the Biden-Harris border debacle has affected U.S. states, cities, and towns—it actively buries it. The New York Post is a rare exception. On Sept. 6, the Post’s Jennie Taer reported that Venezuelan brothers Dixon and Nixon Azuaje-Perez, alleged members of the vicious Tren de Aragua gang and both charged in connection with a July 28 shooting in Aurora, Colorado, are out on $1,000 bail. They are apparently being “monitored with GPS technology,” meaning some kind of anklet or wristband. That should hardly reassure residents of the Denver suburb. Diego Ibarra, accused of murdering nursing student Laken Riley in Georgia back in February, was also monitored with a GPS ankle monitor after he had assaulted Border Patrol agents in an effort to “get into the country ‘at any cost.’” Under what has become standard operating procedure at the Biden border, this man, also a reported member of Tren de Aragua and already proved to be violent, was released into the country with a notice to appear in immigration court months later. He cut off his ankle monitor, and without any interference from U.S. authorities, was working a job at the University of Georgia when he allegedly killed Riley. What happened to the Azuaje-Perez brothers from Venezuela is a parable for the Biden border. They were both utterly unqualified for visas because they’d never be able to prove to a consular officer that they’d not work illegally when in the U.S. and then go home when their entry permits ran out. On top of that, I’d wager both had criminal records back home that would have disqualified them on more serious grounds—but DHS had no way to know. The brothers apparently used DHS’s CBP One phone app to book an appointment to show up at a port of entry and be paroled in. There was no real verification of the information they gave to get that appointment, and none when they showed up at the port. Nearly every one of the over 1,400 people who show up at a port every day via this process—the scale and scope of which is authorized nowhere in U.S. law—gets approved for parole, however sketchy they may seem. The Azuaje-Perez brothers were released at the border on the assumption that they were going to claim asylum at some point. In the meantime, the risk of them resuming their gang activity was on us. With no way to screen for gang members, sex offenders, or even terrorist suspects, you might suspect that the Biden-Harris administration would be careful about using CBP One parole. But no—they’re making it even easier. Now, illegal aliens from across the world can apply from anywhere in Mexico (or via a virtual private network (technology that masks your actual computer or smart phone location), pretending to be in Mexico). And “the Mexican government will offer security-escorted bus transport to migrants traveling north for asylum appointments through the CBP One app,” reports Texas Public Radio. You see, Mexico doesn’t want to take any risks—once again, that’s on us. Next week, I’ll look at the impacts on public housing and local services to see how heavily burdened some communities are by sudden changes in their demography caused by mass illegal migration. The BorderLine is a weekly Daily Signal feature examining everything from the unprecedented illegal immigration crisis at the border to immigration’s impact on cities and states throughout the land. We will also shed light on other critical border-related issues such as human trafficking, drug smuggling, terrorism, and more. Read Other BorderLine Columns: Fraud Permeates Biden-Harris’ Illegal Alien ‘Sponsorship’ Program Despite Tough Talk, Biden-Harris Admin Rolls Out Red Carpet for Illegal Alien Gangs Biden Administration’s Latest Illegal Immigration Scam How Ruling Elites Continue to Stifle Debate Over Immigration Policy NJ Town Prioritizes Protecting Illegal Aliens From ICE Over Public Safety The post What Does an ‘America-Last’ Border Policy Look Like? Let Us Count the Ways—Part 1: The BorderLine appeared first on The Daily Signal.

Are Elite Colleges Cheating the Affirmative Action Ruling After All?

CNBC anchor Andrew Ross Sorkin brought on the president of a major leftist pressure group to explain the rapid collapse of diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) initiatives at major companies. Sorkin spoke to Human Rights Campaign (HRC) President Kelley Robinson on the Sept. 12 edition of Squawk Box and asked her to explain why businesses were abandoning DEI and severing ties with her once-dominant organization. “Major U.S. companies have been walking back their internal diversity, equity, and inclusion policies, Ford, Lowe’s, Tractor Supply and others will stop submitting data to LBLGBTQ+ advocacy group, the Human Rights Campaign,” Sorkin said. Sorkin specifically asked Robinson if companies were seeking to avoid boycotts by rebuking DEI—and pressed for information on whether the Supreme Court’s decision against racial discrimination in college admissions drove companies away from the leftist ideology. Robinson ignored the hypothetical question and lashed out at her enemies in a response that showed no sign of any understanding of the Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard decision.  “There's no denying that there is tension in the business community right now related to the political nature of some of these issues that are popping up, and unfortunately, it's nothing new. The same sort of narratives that we saw coming out of the Supreme Court are mirroring the horrific, anti-LGBTQ+ policies that we've seen in hundreds of bills in states across this country,” Robinson said.  Robinson’s remarks followed an exodus of companies from the HRC’s grip. Since June 27, Ford, Molson-Coors, Tractor Supply, Harley-Davidson, Jack Daniel’s parent company Brown-Furman and Lowe’s have abandoned DEI initiatives and cut ties with the HRC after campaigns by political commentator and podcast host Robby Starbuck.  Companies such as Lowe’s and Tractor Supply have made commitments to cease funding pride festivals, while the latter also promised to “eliminate DEI roles” and “retire our current DEI goals.” Many of the companies have ceased separating employee groups by race or sexual orientation and removed leftist training materials. According to USA Today, Stanley Black & Decker has also abandoned Robinson’s group.  Robinson impotently told Sorkin that the HRC will punish the companies for rolling back DEI and ending their relationships and data sharing with her organization. She promised that these companies faced a “25-point deduction” to their Corporate Equality Index (CEI) scores. The CEI tracks to what extent companies embrace radical policies such as allowing men in women’s restrooms and “healthcare coverage for medically necessary transition-related care.” Robinson followed this announcement with an apparent threat, warning, “It's important that we have accountability here and that employees and consumers alike and shareholders too get to see the impact of these decisions on these companies.”. While the HRC president bragged that “over 1400 companies” still work with her radical organization, Starbuck announced that he is coming after these companies as well. Moreover, Starbuck promised to expose the HRC for pushing companies to “cover transition care, not just for the adults who work for you, but also for children in the states where it is legal.”  It’s time to expose the @HRC. This is a must see video. Did you know that most major companies work with a group that calls Trump a "White nationalist" who "hates America" and many give this group MILLIONS as they work to legalize child sex changes and men in girls locker rooms?… pic.twitter.com/2kz4fj9foM — Robby Starbuck (@robbystarbuck) September 12, 2024 Conservatives are under attack! Contact ABC News (818) 460-7477, CBS News (212) 975-3247 and NBC News (212) 664-6192 and demand they report on the dangers of leftist DEI ideology infecting corporate America.

X owner Elon Musk highlighted the importance of preserving free speech globally explaining how individuals can be “imprisoned or killed” if they speak out against their respective countries’ ruling authority.  Musk sounded the alarm during a special Sept. 10 interview with All-In podcast hosts Chamath Palihapitiya, Jason Calacanis, David Sacks and David Friedberg. “They spoke about free speech, with Musk cautioning, “There is like, this weird movement to quell free speech, kind of around the world, and this is something we should be very concerned about.”  Citing the Framers and free speech, Musk continued, “You have to ask yourself, why was the First Amendment, like, a high priority? It’s because people came from countries where if you spoke freely, you’d be imprisoned or killed—and they’re like, ‘Well, we’d like to not have that here because that was horrible.’”  Sacks added to the conversation, remarking “We knew there were authoritarian places around the world, but we thought that in the West, we’d have freedom of speech, and we’ve seen like you said, it seems like a global movement. In Britain, you’ve got teenagers being put in prison for memes.” Agreeing with Sacks, Musk alluded to the recent French arrest of Telegram CEO Pavel Durov in France, on Aug. 25 as an example of this global censorship. Related: Musk, Rumble CEO Condemn Global Assault on Free Speech as Telegram CEO Arrested in France Expanding on this point, Musk responded, “If a country's laws are a particular way and … we think we are being asked to break them and be silent about it then obviously that is no good.” He went on to say, “I think any given thing we do at X corp, we’ve got to be able to explain in light of day, and not feel it was dishonorable or we did the wrong thing.”  Calacanis shared Musk’s concern, remarking, “I'm a bit concerned, as your friend that you’re going to go to one of these countries and I’m going to wake up one day and you’re going to get arrested and like, I'm going to have to go bail you out or something like this is… feels very acute.” Calacanis continued to share the cause of his concern, inquisitively asking Musk about a Guardian journalist suggesting Musk be jailed. Musk answered, directly, “There have been three articles, in the past three weeks. … calling for me to be imprisoned.”  ICYMI!: Musk Launches ‘Alexandre Files’ to Expose Origin of Brazil’s Free Speech Assault Calacanis concernedly responded, “The premise here is, that you bought this thing, this online forum or communication forum, and you're allowing people to use it to express themselves, therefore you have to be jailed? I don't understand the logic here.”  Musk responded to Calacanis's remark saying the issue is that if governments “do not like the truth, they want to suppress it.”  The infamous articles by The Guardian urging the incarceration of Musk include an op-ed written by former U.S. Secretary of Labor Robert Reich and headlined, “Elon Musk is out of control. Here is how to reign him in.”  The other pieces were written by Guardian Reporter Carole Cadwallad (“Racism, misogyny, lies: How did X become so full of hatred? And is it ethical to keep using it?”) and Columnist Zoe Williams (“Don’t rejoice yet, Elon Musk and his tech bros-in-arms are winning the global battle for truth”). Conservatives are under attack. Contact your representatives and demand that Big Tech be held to account to mirror the First Amendment while providing transparency, clarity on hate speech and equal footing for conservatives. If you have been censored, contact us using CensorTrack’s contact form, and help us hold Big Tech accountable.

Do you carry a gun? Bad idea, says Hollywood. Civilians with guns are fools. You are more likely to hurt yourself than the bad guy. “Leave it to a good guy with a gun to really screw things up,” says a cop on ABC’s “The Rookie.” Liberal politicians agree. “A good guy with a gun will stop bad guys with a gun?! It doesn’t hold up,” smiles New York Gov. Kathy Hochul. “An adolescent rescue fantasy,” adds an “expert” on CBS. Now, I’m not a gun person. I was raised among lefty gun haters. I assumed Hollywood and “experts” were right. When I saw economist John Lott’s book, “More Guns, Less Crime,” I rolled my eyes. But now I understand that Lott makes a good point. “A couple million times a year, people use guns defensively,” he says in my new video. “When a civilian tries to stop one of these instances, they’re overwhelmingly successful.” But FBI reports say self-defense with guns is rare. “They’re simply missing a huge number of cases,” says Lott. He’s posted a list of cases the FBI ignored, where civilians stopped shooters. The FBI lists the Pulse nightclub shooting in Orlando. Forty-nine people were killed. “One week afterwards,” says Lott, “there was a similar attack at a nightclub in South Carolina.” But there, a civilian shot the attacker. “Still had 125 rounds of ammunition on him when he was stopped!” says Lott. Somehow, the FBI missed that case, along with so many others. When 17 people were killed at Parkland, Florida, that got lots of news coverage. Few people know that “just a few months later in Titusville, Florida, (at) an elementary school,” says Lott, “a man came up, started firing his gun. Fortunately, a hot dog vendor (with a) concealed handgun was able to wound the attacker and stop him before he was able to kill.” “Stepped in and saved a lot of people’s lives,” said a local police officer. But the FBI somehow missed that, too ... Lott’s list of ignored cases includes the story of Raul Mendez, who was at a party when a guest opened fire. “Bullet enters right by my ear, goes straight through my face and out my left eye ... Blind from one eye and covered in blood, I unloaded four rounds and finished him off.” Mendez probably saved the lives of a dozen people at that party. I tell him, “The FBI records instances like this, but somehow they have no record of your case.” “They’re not recording the true numbers,” Mendez replies. I ask Lott why. “There’s a lot of political views that infect their data,” he says. “I had interactions with the people in the FBI ... I had people tell me, ‘Well, I’m a Democrat.’” I push back. “The FBI, who carry guns, are anti-gun? It’s not believable.” “They think that it would go against the narrative that they want to push,” answered Lott. Stossel TV asked the FBI why they don’t include self-defense cases like Mendez’. They replied that their data is: “not intended to explore all facets of active shooter incidents.” Too bad politicians and the media don’t realize that. “It’d be great if we could just make all guns disappear,” says Lott. “But when you ban guns, it’s basically the most law-abiding good citizens who obey. Every place in the world that’s banned all guns or all handguns has seen murder rates go up.” So-called experts like a psychiatrist featured on Detroit’s CBS station confidently say, “There haven’t been good guys with a gun who stop mass shootings. It’s the kind of thing you learn reading comic books!” Mendez replies: “I was prepared, and it saved lives. There’s no comic book story about that. Those are facts. That’s what happened. I was there. I’m sure there’s many more out there that go unheard.”