Daily Headlines | Wednesday November 3, 2021

Good Morning!  

Political fortunes can change quickly.  

“Hang on to your hat. Hang on to your hope. And wind the clock, for tomorrow is another day,” wrote E.B. White. 

“Tomorrow” is today for the victors in key election races yesterday:  

Glenn Youngkin wins Virginia governor’s race, riding enthusiasm wave on education issues 

From the Washington Examiner: 

Glenn Youngkin flipped the Virginia governorship to Republican control, pulling off a win by embracing hot-button education and cultural issues and signaling trouble for Democrats nationwide heading into 2022. 

He led what appears to be a Republican sweep, with Winsome Sears winning the lieutenant governor’s office , Jason Miyares leading incumbent Democratic Attorney General Mark Herring, and Republicans appearing to flip the state House of Delegates from Democratic to Republican control by a single seat . 

“Alrighty, Virginia, we won this thing,” Youngkin declared as he took the stage well after midnight at his victory party in a Chantilly ballroom. 

“There are always those that say that that hill is too steep to climb. But we are empowered. We’re empowered by a conviction, a righteous conviction in our children’s future. We’re strengthened by our collective belief in the Virginia promise,” he said. 

RELATED: Babylon Bee: Terry McAuliffe Baffled That Telling Parents The State Owns Their Children Wasn’t A Winning Strategy (Satire)  

2.  N.J. governor race still too close to call. Murphy, Ciattarelli waiting for all votes to be counted. 

From NJ.com: 

The bitter race for New Jersey governor didn’t end on Election Day. 

In a shocker, the contest, once seen as a shoo-in for Gov. Phil Murphy, remained too close to call Wednesday. Results this morning show the Democratic governor and Republican challenger, Jack Ciattarelli, less than 1 percentage point apart, teetering on a razor thin margin in a race that surprised many and burst into the national spotlight. 

As of 7:03 a.m. EDT Wednesday, with 98% of the precincts in, Ciattarelli was leading Murphy by about 1,200 votes, according to totals from the Associated Press. That amounted to 49.7% for Ciattarelli and 49.6% for Murphy. 

But thousands of votes — especially from Democratic-leaning areas — have yet to be counted. And it remains unclear how many vote-by-mail or provisional ballots still must be tallied. 

3.   Will the Radical Left Finally Realize There are Consequences to Their Foolish Policies? 

From The Daily Citizen: 

Bad and unfortunate things have been happening to people since the beginning of time, but rarely has so much unnecessary and avoidable misfortune happened so quickly – and at the hands of so few. 

“Whoever trusts in his own mind is a fool, but he who walks in wisdom will be delivered,” offered King Solomon in Proverbs (28:26). 

Fair-mindedness demands we recognize that COVID-19 has upended norms and complicated everything. But it would be naïve to ignore the fact that radical actors have taken advantage of these unusual times, exploiting the pandemic every which way possible. 

And whether calculated or by coincidence, events of the last few months would strongly suggest that wisdom is waning in Washington and elsewhere. Common sense appears to be in short supply. 

God’s principles may not inoculate us from life’s struggles, but they exponentially improve our chances and help us navigate whatever circumstances befall us. They guide us by revealing how things really are, how things really work – and what we can do about it. 

The Apostle Paul warns us that “For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God (Romans 3:23) – a reminder that troubles with our fellow man are inevitable. We’re all imperfect and in desperate need of help. We need a Savior to save and sustain us – but we also need to prepare accordingly, knowing that man’s fallen nature bends towards evil and wickedness. 

Elections have consequences – but so do poorly thought-out policies. 

Perhaps our current malaise and mess is awakening many to the ill-informed policies that have been romanticized for so long. 

Washington Post Reports On Demonic Energy Behind The Left’s Culture War 

From The Federalist: 

A Halloween-themed profile of a “teenage witch” in The Washington Post over the weekend reads surprisingly like a backhanded affirmation of the Bible and Christianity. It openly connects gender dysphoria with occult experimentation, and both with unsupervised young people going deep into social media rabbit warrens. 

It’s a bit shocking just how open both the witches and the Washington Post are about depicting the connections between their witchcraft and the left’s culture war. It puts a bead on something I’ve been pondering for a long time, that what is depicted as a political and cultural divide really has roots much deeper. Our divide is spiritual. 

That’s also just plain biblical. The Bible flatly declares: “For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this age, against spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places.” 

The culture war is not about skin color, geographic location, ancestry, income level, or any such comparatively superficial things, but about our hearts, our spiritual allegiances. This war goes right into the deepest parts of our beings and of the universe. It’s typified by whether one will acknowledge any authority over the self, such as the existence of objective truth, truths that are true for all people in all times regardless of their feelings or “experience.” For that’s what worship is: An acknowledgment that one is under an authority. 

For Christians, that authority is Christ himself, who is the Word of God. For Satanists — and now leftists more broadly — that authority is the Self. In both literature and religion, Lucifer is defined by denying any authority but his own. While Jesus was defined by His submission to God the Father, Lucifer was defined by his rebellion against God the Father. 

The Best of Times and the Worst of Times for Religious Freedom at the Supreme Court 

From The Daily Citizen: 

“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness.” So it was yesterday at the U.S. Supreme Court, to quote Charles Dickens’ in A Tale of Two Cities. 

On November 1, the court issued two orders in highly important cases for religious liberty. 

In the first case, the Supreme Court summarily reversed a lower court opinion that had upheld a New York regulation requiring employers to cover abortions in their health insurance plans. 

For the Roman Catholic Diocese of Albany and the Sisterhood of Saint Mary (the oldest Anglican religious order founded in America), that regulation just wouldn’t fly. 

Senator Hawley Will Introduce Amendment to Stop Forcible Conscription of Women 

From The Daily Citizen: 

U.S. Senator Josh Hawley will introduce an amendment this week to remove a provision from the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) that requires women to register for the draft. 

In the current proposed draft of the 2022 NDAA, Section 511 is titled “Modernization of the Selective Service System.” 

The section amends the Military Selective Service Act (MSSA) to require “every person” to register for the draft. Section 511 also amends sections of the MSSA in several ways: 

“By striking ‘male citizen’ and inserting ‘citizen’; 
By striking ‘male person’ and inserting ‘person’; 
By striking ‘present himself’ and inserting ‘appear’; 
And by striking ‘so long as he’ and inserting ‘so long as such alien’.” 

The senator’s proposed one-page amendment to the NDAA is just three words long: “Strike section 511.” 

“It is wrong to force our daughters, mothers, wives, and sisters to fight our wars,” said Senator Hawley in a press release. 

Pence says James Madison and the Bible helped him certify election results against Trump’s wishes

From the Washington Post: 

Speaking at a Young America’s Foundation event at the University of Iowa, Pence was asked by an audience member identified only as Jared whether “someone in the White House convinced you that it would destroy your hopes of becoming president” if he followed Trump’s pressure not to certify the election results in Arizona and other states. 

The former vice president, whose answer was met with applause from the Iowa City audience, denied that he was advised it would hurt his chances of running for president if he followed Trump’s plan. 

Pence, referring to the oath he took to uphold the Constitution, also cited a Bible verse he said he leaned on: “Psalm 15 says he who keeps his oath even when it hurts.”

CDC advisers recommend Pfizer’s COVID vaccine for children ages 5 through 11 

From NPR: 

Children ages 5 through 11 years old may soon be able to get a low-dose COVID-19 vaccine made by Pfizer-BioNTech. Advisers to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention voted unanimously to recommend the shots Tuesday for the approximately 28 million U.S. children in this age group. 

If the recommendations are endorsed by the CDC’s director, Dr. Rochelle Walensky, as expected, children could begin getting their shots within the next several days. 

The vaccine is one-third the adult dose, and the vaccine would be given in two doses, three weeks apart. The lower dose was chosen to minimize side effects and still produce strong immunity, Pifzer says. 

Before the committee vote, at the start of the Tuesday advisory meeting, Walensky called this “a monumental day” as she urged the panel to consider the unprecedented toll that COVID-19 has had on children. The CDC’s latest data show that 172 children ages 5 to 11 have died from COVID-19 and more than 8,300 have been hospitalized. 

New blood test can spot more than 50 types of cancer – many hard to detect early 

From CBS News: 

The sooner most cancers are discovered, the better the odds they can be successfully treated. 

Mayo Clinic participated in research on a test that can detect more than 50 cancers. Doctors call it a game-changer, CBS Minnesota reports. 

“My dad, he was a healthy guy. He didn’t have any known risk factors for cancer,” Dr. Julia Feygin said. Feygin lost her 40-year-old father to pancreatic cancer when she was 13. Diagnosed at stage three, he lived for nine more months. 

“I strongly believe that purpose can be found in everything that happens,” Feygin said. 

She’s now part of a team at a Menlo Park, California-based company called GRAIL that’s introducing the blood test, called Galleri. She says can it catch hard-to-detect, aggressive and often deadly cancers like pancreatic, ovarian and esophageal. 

“If cancers can be detected early, we can dramatically improve patient outcomes,” Feygin said. 

10. Braves Win World Series; Dansby Swanson Points to His Faith  

From CBN: 

“I’m just so thankful to be here,” [Dansby Swanson] told FOX Sports’ Ken Rosenthal. “I really can’t say it enough. Getting traded over here, at the time I didn’t understand it. But God’s always got a plan and if I’ve learned one thing is having faith in that plan will never fail you. It’s one of the best things that’s ever happened to me.” 

Swanson has been open about his Christian faith as well as his battle for mental health.   

During an interview earlier this year on the Sports Spectrum Podcast, he recalled having a panic attack that left him “paralyzed” with fear. 

“I was having a hard time breathing,” Swanson said. “I was having a hard time speaking, moving. I had to think about it to do it. It was all very robotic.”   

He started working with a mental wellness coach and created a healthy habit of focusing on important things to help calm him down. Little did he know it would lead him down a spiritual path toward recovery. 

“We started to talk about things that were going to help me grow spiritually and mentally during that time,” he added. “It really started to lead me down to this calling, this spiritual component.”   

Swanson started spending more time in Scripture and eventually started a Bible study with the Braves team chaplain, Terry Evans.  

He encourages everyone to get closer to God by spending more time in His presence.  

“If anything, the lesson that I’ve learned was that you can’t go wrong trusting and growing closer to God,” Swanson noted. “Whatever way that works for you is what works for you. But spend time with God. Legitimately spend time in the words that He wrote through people that were on this earth. Spend time in prayer and meditation and silence. Do these things to grow near to Him.” 

He added, “I really started to feel His presence more, and I really started to feel more comfortable with the callings and stuff that He’s put on my heart.”